File THIS!
by Tiger Rhodes
Summary: A series of related comedy pieces focussed mostly on Reno and Yuffie, and their interactions within Turk HQ. Completed, with a bonus chapter added out of sheer, morbid fun. Edit: Fixed the formatting. Its cool now. Read!
1. File 1: Exploration

"Move."  
  
"Reno..." Elena warned, holding her arms out as a kind of makeshift blockade. Yeah, this was exactly what she needed right now. A drunk Turk knocking over all of her assorted files (for a moment, the sweet, trusting, optimist pre-Turk girl in her asked how she knew Reno was drunk. The other side, who she liked to call the smart side, said that it was Reno. Case Closed. Duh.) She'd figured this would happen when she had first been assigned the job of gathering all the vital information the Turks had gathered together, but after a while had just assumed Reno had fallen off a bar stool after some bender and forgotten about the week she had spent following him around like some kind of lovesick girl, writing things down in a notebook like some kind of a... what had he called it? Some dumbfuck cub reporter who had stumbled across a celebrity car crash. Right. After all, in a world of Mako .45s, Thundermare Shotguns, and Electro-Rods, who would have thought Reno would even make his stumbly way to the filing room?  
  
Who would have thought that he would even remember that they had a special room added onto the building, even though at the time he hadn't been able to shut up about the extra cost. This from a guy who had helped buy an entire bar just so he had less distance to walk in the morning for a pick-me-up shot of whiskey.  
  
Apparently, God thought that he would. Or most likely Satan, because for some reason Elena thought that God had stopped even thinking about the dark little red ink stain in Junon a long time before he had even joined up with the Turks.  
  
"Elena," Reno snarled, "Tseng is holding me back from a mission in Wutai. He said it was because of something in my file. Up until now, I didn't even know I had a file." Well that was bullshit, Elena thought, remembering the aforementioned comment about cub reporters. Of course, Reno had a lot worse things than memory losses happen to him when he'd been drinking for a long time. Like going out with huge wads of gil , and coming back broke the next morning. Or even worse, when he had gone out broke, and showed up the next morning in a limo with a huge amount of cash stuffed in his back pocket. He'd looked even paler than usual then, and absolutely refused to discuss a word of what had happened.  
  
"So?" Elena asked, trying to stall for a little time until someone decided to show up and help her. Tseng, maybe. Or Rude. Or an armored tank of some sort. The new Warthog model would be good... or the entire coalition of the Shinra army, pre-Meteor.  
  
But Reno was not to be swayed. He calmly grabbed the new recruit- newest recruit, Elena reminded herself while in midair. She had, in fact, worked there for over three years- by her waist and lifted her into the air, turning easily to one side and plopping her down to the floor despite her short squawk of indignation. "So," he said, an inch away from her face, "I'm going to go read it."  
  
The doors weren't locked- what would be the need? A Turk could go through any kind of lock short of a galvanized steel combo, and if anyone was trying to break in and had made it this far was probably armed with more than enough to blow the door off its hinges. Reno threw them open and marched into the musty room, making a bee line for a towering file cabinet marked 'R', and began studying it. He turned to face Elena in disbelief. "I have my own drawer!" he asked incredulously.  
  
"Uh..." Elena stammered, "yes. But so do I. We all do."  
  
Reno fled over to another cabinet, the 'E' marked one. "No you don't!" he yelled at her.  
  
Elena blinked. "Oh yeah," she said, "then its just you."  
  
"Jesus," Reno growled, and returned to the drawer, yanking it open, "this is just like my permanent record in high school." He began vigorously shuffling through the papers, reading off the occasional folder header. Elena, for her part, began to take short, shuffling steps backwards, towards the still open doors. "What's this?" Reno cried suddenly, holding up a file. "Ro-" he paused, reading have the name, and then turned to Elena. "Why do you have a file on my sister?" he asked shortly.  
  
"Well..." Elena said timidly, not exactly sure how much the obvious answer was going to piss Reno off, but she guessed a lot. "Because she'd your sister?"  
  
"Righto." Reno said deadpan, and tossed the file across the room. "She's dead now. You don't need that." Elena winced as the various papers scattered across the wooden floor. Reno began reading again. "Brianna, Yvetter, Zell, Tip..." He looked back at Elena again, arching a single eyebrow so high it nearly disappeared between his disheveled hairline. "And these?"  
  
"Well..." Elena repeated, in the exact same tone she had used before, "because they're your hookers?"  
  
Reno squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. "I know that..." he said very slowly, "and you don't need these either." He flung the entire folder, hard, to join the pages on his sister. "This is *exactly* like my high school permanent record....."  
  
Elena, sick of seeing her hard work being scattered all over the ground, decided to sink in a barb or two of her own. She walked across the floor and scooped up a handful of photos from his recent hurling episode and looked them over, even though she already had the images memorized to the pixel- after all, it was her job, and it wasn't like they were all that different from one another. "Brown eyes," she said slowly, deliberately, "short, brown hair... Wutain girls, right? All of them?"  
  
Reno looked back up from the drawer in exasperation. "So this is why I'm not allowed to scout out the new materia store in Wutai? Tseng's worried I'm going to come back with an expense account that has a 50 grand whore charge on it? None of them even live on that continent!"  
  
Scooping up yet another page, Elena smirked. They could say what they wanted to about her experience, but they had to give it to her that she was thorough. "I know." She said. "Briana and Zell live together in an apartment down the street from your house. The penthouse suite, I believe. Yvette actually rents the room about that bar you and Rude own. Well, 'rents' is a misleading word, since neither of you put out ads looking for tenants and she's never actually paid either of you a dime."  
  
Reno stared at her, looking speechless.  
  
"Tip- and what the hell kind of name is that?- actually moved into this here city from Wutai." Elena added helpfully.  
  
"Uh..." Reno stammered, "yeah. She has a sick father who lives here and she wanted to be close to him."  
  
"Maybe," Elena smiled, leafing through the tablet and then tossing it away, "but I think she just wanted to be near the man who single handedly made her yearly salary higher than mine. Of course, that's just my opinion. Did that cover everything?"  
  
"Kinda... maybe... sorta." Reno took a deep breath. "Shut up." With narrowed eyes, he returned to the drawer, which was getting emptier by the second, as he simply dropped files he'd passed onto the floor behind him.  
  
Elena gave him a look as patronizing as she could manage and spoke to him in her best 'talking to an infant' voice. It could be worse. All the girls could be short, skinny, and have red hair. Then you'd be really messed up." Reno glared daggers at her, and she ventured on. "If it makes you feel any better," she cooed, "those... uh, 'ladies' aren't the reason you aren't allowed to set foot in Wutai."  
  
"Whoopty fucking doo..." Reno snarled, and quickly returned to the file. Just as quickly, he looked back up at her, a question in his eyes. "Why is there nothing in here about my parents?" he asked.  
  
Elena took a walk down memory lane for a minute. "Because you got drunk, came in here, and threw it across the floor like some kind of autistic three year old?" she guessed.  
  
"Mhm," Reno muttered, a frown curling across his face. "I can't believe I stooped that low. Finally!" he popped as a cap, yanking an extra thick file from the drawer, "I found it. Something that's actually about me in my drawer."  
  
Realizing that she had stepped cleanly into hitting distance, Elena excused her self momentarily to get some coffee. When she returned, Reno was muttering incessantly to himself, and Elena could just imagine the joys of the hangover he'd have the next morning. It would involve broken glass. Ohhhh yes, it would involve some broken glass.   
  
"Green eyes," he said distractedly, "red hair, 6'0 tall, 180 pounds... blah blah... shit..." Elena's eyes shot open, and she stared at him for a moment, then decided just to let him go. Maybe some coffee would sober him up so she could go home. She walked up and held out one of her two cups, but he absently smacked it out of her hand. "Hey!" he said, and Reno brandished a page of the file at her like an electro rod. "Why in god's name do you have my underwear type written down?"  
  
Rolling her eyes, Elena shrugged, and kicked the Styrofoam coffee cup away as it rolled towards her foot. "What do you care?" she asked, "You already told us all you don't wear any at the last Christmas party. Six or seven times!"  
  
The seemed to sedate Reno for a moment, an he yanked the second cup of coffee from her hands and took a long sip of the hot liquid as he turned to the next page. Suddenly the brown drink was sprayed all over the front of Elena's blue suit as Reno choked and spit it out, staring at her with eyes as wide as saucers. "You have a picture!" he exploded, and suddenly the big saucers looked a lot more like big, bleary, bloodshot saucers.  
  
Elena opened her mouth to explain, tasting a bit off the coffee sprayed across her cheeks, but no sound came out. Why *did* she have a picture of it? Was it from the Christmas party the year before this one? No... that was the one where he punched out that gang boss and framed Rude for it when the guys friends came over. That had been real bloody... for the friends. And almost for Reno, as Rude chased him out the bar and off the local pier with a baseball bat, where he stopped chasing. Rude could stare into pistol barrels without blinking, but for some reason he was chronically afraid of water. And pixie sticks. But mainly water.  
  
She was brought back to reality by the sound of Reno calmly ripping the photo into many tiny pieces, and then he looked further into the report. "Destroys valuable information," he muttered darkly, reading out loud, and then ripped the entire bottom half of the report off, crumpled it into a ball, and then tossed it away. "That is such bullshit."  
  
Elena smirked. "Right," she said, and looked down at the floor as she ran her fingers through her hair and heaved a sigh. This was going to take forever.  
  
There was a clatter of paper on the floor, and Elena looked up, but Reno hadn't thrown anything this time. The folder had slipped out from between his fingers, and he had stood clenching a single picture in his hand. "How..." he paused, taking a deep breath, "who took this?" He asked, and Elena was amazed at how sober he suddenly sounded. She offered a weak smile.  
  
"So you found it."  
  
"Who took it?" Reno asked again, sounding a little angrier with each word.  
  
Elena shrugged at him. "The same one who does all of our surveillance. Tseng."  
  
"Oh," Reno said calmly, shredding the picture and letting it rain down to the ground in two pieces. Without another word, he stepped for the door.  
  
"What're you going to-"  
  
"Talk to him," Reno said simply, "just talk to him." But the door slamming indicated a good deal more than talking. Elena sighed and looked down at the scattered remains of the drawer, prodding them with her toe like some sort of a dead animal. She bent over and deftly scooped up the two pieces of the picture, lining them up as she raised them. Intentionally or not, Reno had torn a line directly between the two people who were the targets of the picture. Putting the puzzle together, Elena joined the lips of the couple featured, and sighed. "I wonder what he sees in that bitch," she questioned the empty room, dropping the two pieces back to the floor. Once again, Reno and Yuffie were separated in the Polaroid, lying absently on the floor. "At least now I know who is running the new materia store."  
  
Silently she went to the closet, opened it, and started fishing around inside. With a heave she extruded a stack of files from underneath a shelf and lugged them over to the file cabinet, dumping them in the now barren drawer.  
  
"So," she said thoughtfully, "that's why Tseng had be make copies of everything."  
  
  
  
A/N: I sincerely apologize to any and all who came here in search of actual humor. Please review though, because it validates my existence, and I've had a traumatic week. 


	2. File 2: Confrontation

"Mother fucker..." Reno muttered, marching down the hard wood floor and completely ignoring the wild and unsettling reflection that flashed at him when ever he passed one of the many mirrors that lined the walls. "Mother fucker. Futher mucker. Futher mucking sock cucker..."  
  
Reno paused, the blue streak of cursing that had been going non-stop since he left the filing room finally coming to a rest as his lips continued to work soundlessly, the words tripping over their own feet somewhere back around his tonsils and landing face first on his tongue. With a sudden pop of horror that hit him along the spinal chord and raced up to his mind with a sweaty faced and desperate expression, he realized that for the first time in his life he was feeling something that could not be expressed in four letter words. His particular favorite curses had lost all meaning in the attempt.  
  
So it was in an uneasy silence that he marched the rest of the way across the building and threw open the massive stained black oak doors that lead to Tseng's office. There was an intermittent room between the spot that Tseng's desk resided and the doors that lead to the rest of the building, a fact that Reno often griped about. It was empty space, he always reasoned, that he could be using on something important. Such as a wall to wall mural of Tip performing a move she liked to call the 'Honeysucker'.   
  
But now, it seemed, the reason for his argument had been removed. Or, rather, pushed out the other side, as its hard to remove something by adding something else. And something had indeed been added. One large, brown desk. One thin, tan man. One molting, green parrot. Whether the three had come in together or had simply been purchased separately and tossed in a pile, Reno had no idea, but he didn't like it.  
  
He stared wordlessly at the man sitting at the desk and petting the parrot for a few moments, his eyes wide in disbelief. He pointed a long, thin finger at him like a gun, his thumb twitching in reflex from his cowboy playing days of a child. "Who the fuck are you?" he barked, happy to find that his favorite expletive had found its way back into his functioning vocabulary.  
  
The man, who couldn't have been more than twenty, was not wearing one of the Turks customary blue suits. This pleased Reno, as it meant he hadn't somehow slaughtered Tseng, stripped him naked, and worn the clothes in some sort of post murder ritual. It displeased him in the fact that someone who most obviously was not a Turk was currently in the Turk headquarters, sitting at a desk and petting a parrot. He had dark brown hair and a tan. The man, not the parrot.  
  
"My names Kevin," he said cheerily, glancing up at Reno. "If you want to make an appointment with Mr. Chet we can try to put something together now, or I have a number you could call if you'd be inconvenienced by coming in personally."  
  
"Interestingly enough," Reno growled, "I'm already here personally."  
  
"So you are." Kevin's smile broadened. "So would you like to make an appointment?"  
  
"I would like to roast you long and slow over a propane stove burner. I would like to shove you feet first into that square foot bird cage there until you oozed out the other side in spaghetti strips. However," Reno said, cutting off the surprised look and low murmur of fear that seemed ready to escape the mystery man, "I would be content with knowing who you are."  
  
"Oh!" Kevin exclaimed, as if the question was at all different from the one he'd answered moments ago. "I'm the new temp here. Mr. Chet was overwhelmed with some filing work he needed done, so he called my agency and had me sent right over. I'm like a hooker, except with paper. And if a pen bursts in my mouth while I chew on it, well, I spit the ink out."  
  
Reno completely ignored the later part of that rather obscene message, and instead focused on a single word from its midst. "Files?" he asked, his hands flexing convulsively. "What sort of files?"  
  
"What sort of files?"  
  
Reno blinked. His gaze, which had been locked on Kevin the temp, slowly slid to the left, and focused on the bright green parrot sitting in its cage. Under his jacket, his hand worked, tightening around the pistol he kept there in case his pistol was lost, his backup pistol jammed, and his backup backup pistol ran out of ammo. "Don't do that," he snarled at the bird.  
  
"Don't do that!" it squawked back happily. Sensing danger, the temp inched over to Reno's right, but even in his fear of imminent death he continued to sort papers.  
  
Reno's eyes narrowed into dangerous little slits. The last man who had seen that look was now part of Wutai's latest bridge's supporting pillar. "Have you ever heard of barbecue, little bird?" he hissed, daring the parrot to mimic him.   
  
"Have you ever heard of mouth wash?" it replied simply, then burst into guffaws of little parroty laughter. Reno blinked in surprise, unsure he'd just heard something remotely close to what he thought he had just heard. Either way, he figured, he couldn't take the risk. He slowly worked the pistol loose from its hip holster, hoping Kevin wouldn't scream to loudly when he was sprayed with liquid beak.  
  
"Reno!"  
  
The voice came from behind him, not in front, which spared the Turk the creepiness of having a parrot scream his name in a plea for mercy. The red haired assassin spun on his heel, hastily tucking his gun away again in an effort to appear even slightly psychologically balanced. He assumed he failed by the way Tseng simply shook his head.  
  
"Tseng!" he responded in kind, and then added. "I've got a problem with you. But, more importantly, who the hell is this?"  
  
Tseng came marching up, looking as crisp and clean as ever, his heavily polished shoes clicking across the floor. "That's Kevin," he informed Reno.  
  
"So I'm told." Reno responded.  
  
"He's a temp."  
  
"So I'm also told." Reno responded again.  
  
"By the same person?" Tseng asked, causing Reno to pause for a moment to make sure he'd understood the question. When that moment was over, and Reno still wasn't sure, Tseng shrugged it off and continued talking. "Elena phoned ahead. She said I should 'get a big bag of cookies ready for the picture shredding baby."  
  
Reno's eyebrows shot up to his hairline, and the eyes which were browed started smoldering. "Oh really?" he snarled.  
  
"No." Tseng said, with a shrug. "But she did tell me what happened, so I decided to tweak her words a bit to fit the situation as I saw it. Don't tell me you're here to throw a tizzy over some pictures we have of you."  
  
"Of me. Of my sister. Of my package, interestingly enough."  
  
"And," Tseng cut him off, "of you trying very hard to get a taste sample of the back of Yuffie Kiko Kisargi's uvula. That's why you came here, right? That's what you have a problem with?"  
  
Stunned by the frankness of his leader, Reno hastily backtracked. "I don't have a problem with anything."  
  
The parrot chose this moment to speak up. "I've got a problem with you. But, more importantly, who the hell is this?"  
  
Reno didn't even wait for his eyes to finish closing in exasperation before he drew his pistol and fired directly into the center of the bird, reducing it to a green and red mist and splashing Kevin the temp with liquid beak. Not surprisingly, he screamed, but added a little twist of his own by diving to the floor and hiding beneath the desk. Tseng, for his part, simply shook his head at the waste of a good bullet. Personally, he would have just thrown the cage in the furnace, it would have helped heating costs for the building. He would have to dock Reno's pay twice, he reasoned.  
  
"What I meant to say," Reno said, now that the animal stenographer was gone. "Was that I don't have a problem, as long as I'm going to Wutai."  
  
"What makes you think you aren't?" Tseng asked calmly.  
  
"You. Well, Elena, who I'm beginning to think is just one of your many opposable thumbs."  
  
"Oh." Tseng remarked. "That. That was nothing. Here." He held up a packet, one of the customary arrangements of paper and envelopes that came whenever they were assigned a mission. Jutting out from one end was the unmistakable bottom side of a plane ticket.  
  
"Do you mean to tell me..." Reno said, the color draining from his face, "that you only told me I couldn't go to Wutai so that I would come to you, so you could *give me my ticket to go to Wutai!?*" he finished in a scream, his eyes wide, his jaw dropped so low it hardly seemed to be moving.  
  
"Well, I wasn't about to walk it to you." Tseng said, shrugging. "You were, like, all the way across the building."  
  
Shaking his head in utter disgust, Reno snatched the packet from his leader's hand and tucked it under his jacket. "When I get back," he said, "you and I are going to have a very long talk about the fact you seem to find amusement in all things stressing to me."  
  
"When you get back," Tseng responded, "you and I are going to have a very long talk about how much of your impending salary bonus is going to be going to our new recruit."  
  
"Uh." Reno said, pausing, and deciding that was all that needed said. Then he recanted on that decision. "What!?"  
  
"You're mission just changed." Tseng informed him coldly, but with a gleam in his eyes. "You aren't going to Wutai to check out any store. You're going to recruit a new infiltration agent for the Turks. When you go about trying to convince her to go along with her new employment, I suggest you don't mention its almost solely because I prefer you worn out from hours and hours of kinky ninja sex than hyped up on your own disgusting juices because you can't get anyone to receive them. Understood?"  
  
Head spinning, Reno nodded. "Understood."  
  
Tseng nodded back. "Good. Get out. And you," he adds, pointing at Kevin, who's just beginning to poke his head up from under his now blood soaked desk. "Get me the dossier on a Ms. Kisargi. Somehow I think we're going to be glad to have made copies of it, very, very soon." 


	3. File 3: Confusion

The Last Call Bar was ironic in several ways, not the least of which being that they didn't serve drinks. Not only did this not make it an actual bar, but it also meant that last call was meaningless. Reno had thought about looking into this once, to find out what in the blue hell the owner of the restaurant had been thinking, but then he realized something's were better off knowing. As it was, this place- its name, its mystery, its story- was one of the few areas of ignorant contentment in Reno's life, and he was fully happy with it.  
  
"Some place, huh? Did you know the guy who bought it was just too lazy to change its name when he stopped serving alcohol?"  
  
Reno froze in his chair, his leaned back pose suddenly going rigid as his eyes widened, and slid across the table to fall upon the small form of Yuffie Kisargi. He couldn't believe it. Whenever the two got in an argument, he always swore she could read his mind, but he never expected that particular talent to surface and crush one of the blissful realms of uncertainty that he still had in his life. Shaking his head, he waved the waiter over with his seemingly infinite pot of coffee, and poured himself another cup.  
  
"Hey Yuff'," he said, after he had added the proper condiments, stirred the drink cool, and then sipped about half of it away. "Take a seat."  
  
She was, of course, already sitting. Never one for patience, the thief had lasted about twelve seconds in his little hot beverage display before she had grabbed a stool and slid it over, entertaining herself by coming up with as many different ways to rob this place blind while Reno finished up. The waiter, who Reno was forcing to stand around by locking a vice grip around the mans wrist, nervously turned to Yuffie and asked what she wanted to drink. Approvingly, Reno released the mans arm.  
  
"I'll have a virgin Shirley temple..." Yuffie ventured, quickly looking over the drink list, and then remembered a rather unpleasant allergy. "With no cherry."  
  
The waiter, suppressing a smile, jotted down the order and quickly walked away. Reno fixed Yuffie with a steady gaze as she began to look over the rest of the menu in search of a more solid nourishment. She caught his disbelieving look, and cocked an eyebrow. "What?" she asked nervously. "Am I bleeding or something?"  
  
"God I hope not." Reno said, then paused, rethinking his approach. "You really are amazing." Yuffie beamed.  
  
"I know," she said.  
  
"No, I mean..." Reno paused again, realized he'd been doing far too much thinking about what he was about to say, and promptly cut it the hell out. "Do you realize what drink you just ordered?"  
  
"Shirley temple," she responded uncertainly.  
  
"What kind?" he prompted her further.  
  
"...virgin," she said, catching the possible middle school snickers that would bring, but knowing deep down Reno had at least two years more maturity than anyone in such a school.  
  
"With no?" he asked finally.  
  
"Ch- shut up." Yuffie finished, glaring at him from over her menu, which was nice enough to hide the slight coloring of her cheeks. If he caught her blushing, she would officially need to dump the remainder of his coffee directly into his lap.  
  
The waiter returned with her drink, which she couldn't have wanted less if it consisted mostly of battery acid and pickle juice. He pulled out his order pad, and Yuffie eagerly scanner her menu one last time, as if she might find some miracle dish that eluded her grasp up until this point. After that moment passed, she nodded, completely sure with herself. "I'll have the seafood platter."  
  
"Me too," Reno said instantly, so fast Yuffie figured there was no possible way he had managed even comprehend what she had said. She snapped her menu shut and handed it to the waiter, and Reno did the same. Sensing the tension that would have required a deaf blind man to miss, he quickly scurried off to give the kitchen their orders.   
  
"Shit." Reno said suddenly. "I should have ordered some krill rolls."  
  
Yuffie wrinkled her nose. "Those aren't real Wutain food, you know."  
  
"I know," Reno said simply, "but see that girl over there?" The Turk pointed over at the hostess who was hastily seating people, and was practically bulging out of her restaurant issued sweater. "Those things responsible for giving her back cramps, you know, the ones that are this close to bouncing up and hitting her in the face? Those aren't real either. I still approve whole heartedly."  
  
Yuffie kicked him under the table, and Reno had to fight not to cry out at the sudden searing pain in his shin- as if he'd give her the satisfaction. He half opened her mouth to ask her what exactly *that* had been about, but she told him before he even could. "I cannot believe you just said something like that after I finally agreed to go on a real date with you."  
  
Reno raised his eyebrows so hard they almost disappeared beneath his drooping red bangs. There were so many things wrong with that statement he wasn't even sure how to begin, and for a moment, he actually considered not starting as a viable option. Then his leg brushed up against the table, and pain flared up once again. "This isn't a date," he muttered idly, looking around the restaurant in case he had the sudden need of an emergency exit... or a fire extinguisher.  
  
"Of course its a date," Yuffie replied coolly, "you called me up and asked me to meet you here, didn't you? In fact, you even offered to pick me up in drive. Not to mention you are *damn* sure paying for this after that waitress comment. You even had reservations!"  
  
"I get reservations when Rude and I go out to eat, too," Reno said quickly, "but that doesn't mean the nights going to end with me staring at my reflection in his head as he leans in for a goodnight kiss, does it?"  
  
"What's your problem, anyway?" Yuffie asked, thoroughly offended. She had got used to less than standard treatment from the Turk- it was one of his few redeeming features, actually- but this was getting ridiculous. She couldn't believe she had crammed her hips into underwear that resembled floss for this.   
  
"I don't have a problem," Reno said with a shrug. "You just don't have a date. We've been on dates. Do we ever go anywhere as nice... or, well, public, as this? Besides, who cares if I asked you and offered to drive? Your foot isn't even toying with my crotch right now. You know as well as I do you've never had a date where that hasn't happened."  
  
Yuffie winced, pegged, but not ashamed of herself. If he knew he could get away with it without being arrested, she knew Reno would do the exact same thing, with a vibrator clenched between his toes. "You're a dick," she said simply, finding that appropriate.  
  
"And you are so incredibly lucky you've got breasts," Reno said, speaking mainly to the table, as he didn't want to be looking her in the eyes when he got that one out. Since he seemed to be on a roll with saying that's to no one in particular, he kept going, simply for the sake of scientific interest. "I cant believe this is going this badly already..."  
  
That gave Yuffie *real* pause. What the hell was wrong with Reno today? This was one of the most pleasant evenings they had spent together where any actual conversation had taken place. It didn't really compare to the dates that *started* with the ball gag and the hand cuffs, but for an actual effort at normality, it wasn't bad. "What is that supposed to mean?"  
  
"It means," Reno said, waiting for the waiter to place their food down on the table and leave before continuing, "that things are going to get even less comfortable than this, believe it or not. I was really hoping to save the trouble until the end of the night."  
  
Yuffie froze. "What about it?"  
  
"I'm not really looking forward to it," he responded simply, and began tucking into his food.   
  
Jaw set in a way that would make most sharks get hungry in recognition, Yuffie simply shook her head at Reno for a second. Since when did he not like the way their nights ended? She remembered when he'd ramped his motorcycle over the hood of a cop car just because it was in the way while they went back to her apartment. "You think it will end a certain way, huh?" she asked, appalled at his bluntness going even further than usual.  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"I know so."  
  
"And how, may I ask, do you know that?" Yuffie glared daggers at Reno, but he still refused to look up from his food, apparently truly uncomfortable for one of the first times Yuffie could remember.  
  
"I just do," he said simply, inwardly wondering what the hell she was trying to say. It wasn't like she knew he was going to offer her a job, or anything. Unless Tseng had called ahead in an effort to truly get back at Reno for his parrot-shooting, file-shredding rampage, at which point he would *really* need to shred and shoot when he got back to his headquarters.  
  
"You're really cocky, aren't you?" she demanded.   
  
"It's part of my job," he admitted, though he wasn't entirely sure where she was going with the abrupt subject change.  
  
"Its part of your *job* to take certain things for granted?" Yuffie asked incredulously. "Added onto murder and theft, you're now a hooker or something? Did I accidentally slip you a twenty? And, if so, where's my 19.50 in change?"  
  
Reno blinked. "What?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"...did you actually just call me a hooker?" Reno asked, finally looking up for his food in order to fix Yuffie with a look that had her wishing for the gaze he'd given her when she ordered her drink.  
  
"No. Maybe. That's not the point," Yuffie sighed. "The point is, even if your brand new prophecy powers turn out to correct, what the hell do you mean you aren't looking forward to it? Do you have open wounds or something?"  
  
"...probably, but I fail to see how that's relevant." Reno paused, taking a mental inventory of the scratch marks he still had on his back. "Look, I just don't like doing things that are forced on me, even if I wouldn't mind them in normal circumstances."  
  
"Oh, I'm *forcing* it on you?" Yuffie growled, ready to hurl her unfortunately named beverage into his lap and storm away.  
  
"...not that I know of..." Reno said suspiciously, fixing her with a steely gaze. "Tseng is."  
  
"Tseng!?" she asked.  
  
"Tseng," he confirmed.  
  
"Tseng your boss?" she ventured, looking for confirmation.  
  
"Tseng," he said, granting it.  
  
"What possible business of his is it?" Yuffie asked, realizing she had basically shaved her legs so she could play twenty questions.  
  
"It's his money," Reno said simply, realizing that wasn't exactly the case. It was the money of the business man who's wife was fucking around on him, the guy with way too much debt to the mob, or the corporation that had a few dozen bodies it needed escorted out of the country. Still, he reasoned, Yuffie could probably figure that out for herself.  
  
"WHAT!?"  
  
"I said its-"  
  
"I know what you said!" Yuffie stared at him wide eyed, cheeks red and breath ragged. "I want to know how he's even involved in this! What does he have to do with me?"  
  
"I guess he thinks you'll perform well," Reno said, shrugging. "I didn't really stick around to ask, but he seemed really eager to get you into action. I mean, I've told him some favorable things, but I really didn't think he would take it to this level."  
  
"Well of course I'll perform well!" Yuffie cried. "That isn't the point!"  
  
"How is that possibly not the point, Yuff?"  
  
"I don't know!" Yuffie practically screamed at him, then checked her voice when she started to draw stares to some of the other inhabitants of the poorly named restaurant. "Is it?"  
  
"It is."  
  
"I hope you understand how unsettling this is," Yuffie informed him.  
  
"Hey, I've already told you," Reno finished his meal and pushed the plate away. He was full, but he was truly considering ordering dessert just so he'd have some other diversion to focus on, "I'm not fond of it either."  
  
"We're back to that, then," Yuffie said, glad they'd left Tseng and gotten back to her original topic of indignation. "Besides the... forcedness... involved, why aren't you fond of it?"  
  
"Don't know." Reno said, waving off the waiter as he approached. When they got the check, that meant he would need to start explaining. The only thing that would make up for that would be the new job sex that followed, and even that was a close call. "I don't think well do well in this new situation."  
  
"New situation? What exactly do you think I'm going to be doing tonight?" she asked, not entirely sure she even wanted an answer.   
  
"Tonight? Does that matter? It could be the next day, or the day after that. Until you get fired, I guess." Reno said.  
  
Yuffie was ready to scream, since he'd just gone out and said it. "I'm not your hooker!" she hissed as loudly as she could without giving the preacher who worked down the street an explosive heart attack.  
  
Reno looked up in surprise. "I..." he said, paused, and frowned. "You..." things began to piece together in his mind, and he wasn't entirely sure whether he should laugh or just put a bullet in his head now to save months of agony the trouble. "I'm not offering to pay you for sex, you Frisbee throwing psychopath. I'm offering you a job."  
  
Yuffie's eyes widened in horror. "A... job? For the Turks? So that would be... under... Tsengs... pay roll. And... a new situation." Ms. Kisargi closed her eyes tightly, hoping that when she opened them she would either have been dreaming or in hell, either one particularly preferable to this situation. "I accept," she said, her eyes still closed. Reno seemed surprised it had gone over so easily.  
  
"Can we *please* go have sex how?" he said absently, finishing off his drink.  
  
"GOD yes..." Yuffie muttered, calling for both the waiter and their check. She would have to wait until later to ask him about what kind of money she would be making. For the job, she had to remind herself... for the job. 


	4. File 4: Expense

"Yuffie, we need to talk."  
  
The Wutain ninja looked over her shoulder towards the door in surprise, not used to being addressed while in the middle of reading a file. She wasn't actually reading the file, of course, but the materia catalog enclosed inside the thick manila folder she was holding gave such a convincing illusion that she was that Yuffie had almost begun to believe it herself. She'd gotten used to her system of not working coming through for her, and this sudden hitch in her plans was an instant annoyance.  
  
"Can it wait, Tseng?" she asked, "I'm pretty busy."  
  
Decked out in his usual blue, the pale leader of the Turks leaned patiently against the door frame he'd poked his head through and crossed his arms, willing to put forth the extra effort to make his presence appear effortless. He studied Yuffie carefully for a few moments, hoping she would remember that he wasn't one of her house servants, but that wait proved in vain when she returned to the papers she had clutched in her hand and began to mumble happily about fire and summons. "No," he said, after she had just sunk back into her reading, jarring her to consciousness, "I don't think it can."  
  
"Fine, fine," she muttered unhappily, and placed the folder carefully on her dark brown desk to prevent any unwanted contraband from slipping out. She idly flipped off her reading light, repositioned two of her pictures, spun a pen around a few times and then turned the light back on because she liked the effect it caused, before standing up and walking over to where Tseng stood, regarding her with mild distaste. "Hi," she said simply.  
  
Without responding, the assassins' leader shook his head and turned on his heel, walking calmly and crisply down the wooden corridors that made up the head quarters. Yuffie followed a few steps behind, her step quicker than his, but she continually kept getting held up by the various pictures that Elena had framed and posted up on the walls of the building. She was growing quickly desperate to find a single snap shot that didn't include alcohol, a weapon, and a well manicured finger covering one portion of the lens, but that hope never came to fruition as they reached Tseng's office.  
  
At least, Yuffie thought it was Tseng's office. The fact that there was a young man in the corner who continually twitched at any loud noise and the remnants of bloody green feathers on the floor would have tipped off a more observant employee to the contrary, but Yuffie's mind had made its merry little way back to her catalog, and a particularly effective little blue materia that was supposed to power a summon with your own sense of bouncy charm.  
  
"Please, sit," Tseng instructed, gesturing towards a small, shaky, three legged stool that sat across the desk, and didn't seem able to support anything heavier than a small book or a large squirrel. Shooting Tseng a dark look, as he leaned back in a massive leather chair that seemed to have heating coils, a massage feature, and some sort of expresso machine, Yuffie delicately balanced herself on the shaky object.  
  
"Will this take long?" Yuffie asked. "I'm trying to get back to the case I'm studying."  
  
"No," Tseng said dismissively.   
  
"Good, because it-"  
  
"No, not no." Tseng informed her, his gaze never wavering. "No."  
  
Yuffie paused. "I'm confused," she said, in one of the most honest statements of her life. After her little debacle with Reno a few nights earlier, she'd decided she would start asking questions early. She had also decided to stop assuming people were financing you to have sex with your on again, off again boyfriend, but that was beside the point.  
  
"I wasn't allaying your fear that this will be a lengthy process," Tseng explained, "I was denying your claim that you wanted to get back to studying a case."  
  
Yuffie fought the wave of crimson she felt rising into her cheeks. "Oh yeah?" she demanded, "and how would you know that?"  
  
"Because," he said simply, "I have yet to assign you a case."  
  
"So!?" Yuffie asked, feeling very reminiscent of the time she'd used that exact phrase to a cop that had not only caught her red handed robbing a store, but had caught her doing it with one of those big bags with a dollar sign on it that had seemed like such a good idea to use at the time. Her path down memory lane brought her across an old Christmas cartoon featuring a hideous green creature, and so she thought up a lie- and thought up one quick. "I was studying some old cases you guys have taken, trying to get a feel for how things are done!"  
  
She seemed to think that her cover up, which not only absolved her but also put her in an employee of the month situation, deserved to win some sort of award. Tseng seemed to believe differently, however, as he leveled her with his sternest gaze. "I'm going to pretend you never said that," he informed her, "both because I don't appreciate being treated like one of your old high school teachers, and because Elena would never allow such incriminating evidence as reports on old jobs we took to fall into the hands of someone who has racked up a whopping three days worth of loyalty to the Turks."  
  
"That's not true!" Yuffie insisted. "It was on embezzlement from a company that produces cyrocleaners!"  
  
Tseng lowered his head so he was looking directly at his desk, and winced. "Yuffie," he said in a strained voice, "I'm quite aware you just made that word up."  
  
"Ah." Yuffie said, and because she could think of nothing else to respond with, said it again, before inspiration hit her like a bolt of lightning. She could change the subject! "Is that why you called me in here," she asked, "to finally assign me a case?"  
  
"Actually," he said, "this is about your expense report."  
  
"Oh?" Yuffie asked, with considerable disappointment. She had been hoping to get thrown into a blood and guts mission that involved heroism and some serious looting, and was suddenly confronted with a probably lecture for not crossing a 't' or dotting an 'i'. Or, she realized, there was equal chances that she had crossed and dotted a few times too many.  
  
"Well, for one thing," Tseng began, a look of tired amusement on his face, "you have one."  
  
"So?" Yuffie asked, "I thought you would be happy to have a record of the things I saved, its a lot better than me just randomly spending the groups money, isn't it?"  
  
"Actually, I'm quite fond of the expense sheet system as a whole," Tseng responded, "but I often find that a sudden kink gets thrown into the works when a new recruit hands me one for thousands of dollars when I *haven't assigned her any work yet*!"  
  
"Well, I need clothes, don't I!?" Yuffie responded angrily. "The blue uniform, and everything? And a weapon! I needed a weapon! Those things don't come free, you know... and even if they do, its because I stole them, and I think I deserve a little bit of reconciliation for my efforts there."  
  
"You were provided," Tseng said levelly, "with a standard uniform- two, in fact, one in the sizes you wrote in on your profile, and another in the actual sizes that Elena had you evaluated at. Interestingly enough, those two numbers were even further apart than the comparison of your written age to that stated on your birth certificate."   
  
"So I'm not the best at clerical work," Yuffie said, glaring at him, and unconsiously reaching back to make sure the tag to her new pants was tucked in, "so sue me."  
  
"You were also issued," Tseng continued, ignoring her utterly, "a standard pistol and several boxes of ammunition, and that's just as a signing bonus- we have an open weapons locker that can be freely accessed at any time, even when you aren't currently on assignment. I believe you were shown this locker. Several times."  
  
"I didn't like your selection," Yuffie said defiantly, "nothing there fit my style."  
  
"By 'your style'," Tseng said condescendingly, "I assume you mean your chakrams. So you mean to tell me that your four figure expense report can be attributed to you foregoing the latest in firearm technology, munitions charges, and incendiary devices to go purchase a circle. With sharp edges. That you can throw. And already own several variations of."  
  
Yuffie stuck her chin up. "Define several."  
  
Tseng sighed, and dropped the sheet he was holding, reaching up to massage his forehead. A thin sheen of sweat that had developed on his pale features picked up the excess ink on his finger tips like a sponge, and his naturally colored dot that resided between the man's two eyes was suddenly covered by a massive blot of shiny blue. As Yuffie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from bursting into laughter, Tseng reached forward and thumbed a button on the desk, causing a bell to go off in the corner of the room. Yuffie glanced over to the source of the noise, which happened to be the cowering young man, who stood less than ten feet away. "Y-yes sir?" the man asked, taking a cautious step forward as if he expected the floor to swallow him whole.  
  
"Kevin," Tseng said, "I need you to go find Rude and tell him to come in here. Tell him to stop by the weapons locker first and find something compact that doesn't make a lot of mess, but is strong enough to take someone out at a relatively close distance."  
  
As Kevin rushed off to perform his appointed task, Yuffie watched Tseng warily. "Is Rude going to shoot me?" she asked simply, and judging by the look her new boss gave her, she instantly began to rethink her Reno-inspired policy of asking questions early.   
  
"Why would he do that?" Tseng asked, sounding genuinely interested in her train of thought.  
  
"Well," she started, "not by any personal vendetta, but you have caught me in about a half dozen bold faced lies in this conversation alone. I mean, that's not even taking into account how I accidentally smashed into your car this morning on the way to the office or that one time I stole the condom from your wallet before you went out on your date with that girl who was moving out of the country."  
  
Tseng froze, his mind working. That had been months ago, before he had even considered hiring Yuffie, back when her and Reno had at least pretended to have some interest in each other that wasn't just physical. "That was you!?" he demanded.  
  
"I... no?" Yuffie said sweetly, inwardly wishing she'd suffered some sort of childhood illness that rendered the afflicted mute. Luckily, the situation was saved by an unlikely angel with a bald head and a pair of sunglasses, as Rude walked into the room with a rather small Derringer that may have been black at one time, but now appeared to have been painted red by several covert activities.  
  
"You wanted to see me?" Rude asked, then did a double take as Tseng turned to face him, the blue splatter on his forehead sticking out like an arrow. The bald sharpshooter shot a look at Yuffie, who shrugged in response, as if she had no idea where the offensive mark had come from.   
  
"Yes," Tseng obliviously responded. "First, I want to ask you a few questions about your last mission. Then, I want you to hand that gun to Miss Kisargi, and then go back to the open locker and seal it shut."  
  
"OK..." Rude said in obvious surprise, cocking an eyebrow up and above his sunglasses.  
  
"What was the goal of your last mission, Rude?" Tseng asked simply.  
  
Rude paused for a moment, rooting through the encyclopedic filing system that resided inside his head and coming up with the answer in the same amount of time it Yuffie to realize she had been dwelling on the various kinds of Bahumats and had missed the question entirely. "I was to lay the foundation for black market operations in Gold Saucer," he said.  
  
"Uh huh," Tseng said, nodding approvingly, "and what all did that entail?"  
  
"Three assassinations, a couple dozen briberies, six contract employees and a personal friendship with the vice president of the amusement park," Rude said, as if reading off an index card.   
  
"And what did that cost you?"  
  
"Three thousand, two hundred, and eighty five dollars." Rude said. "Three thousand of that being the briberies and the collective salaries of the contract employees."  
  
"So you could say that you only spent two hundred and eighty five dollars to kill three men and make your way into the heart of one of the most powerful men in the world?"  
  
"You could say that, sir."  
  
"Anyway," Tseng said, turning in his chair to face Yuffie again. "Does that number ring any particular bell to you?"  
  
"Which one?" Yuffie asked, a growing worry gnawing at the inside of her gut.  
  
"The first one," He said.  
  
"Uh..." Yuffie froze. She'd already been caught lying far too many times in the last ten minutes, but she really didn't like the way this was going. "Is there any chance that it's the number on my expense report?"  
  
"I believe there might be a chance," Tseng said, his voice growing in volume as he spoke, "In fact, I believe that the odds against it make winning the lottery while getting struck by lightning look like a sure thing. I believe that those two figures, one for a completely unnecessary shopping spree, and the other for a million dollar profit opportunity operation that required months of planning and almost a year of effort, match up EXACTLY. Now what, my little new recruit, do you have to say about that?"  
  
Yuffie froze. Was this a trick question? Was there honestly any answer on this planet that would either save her job- or at the very least spare her some revolted tonsils and sore knees- in this situation? She shrugged and winged it. "It happens?"  
  
Tseng's eyes glittered dangerously. "Yes," he said, with savory calmness. "It does. Rude? How much did you spend on that suit, and the custom pistol you had made so you could shoot someone in the ear and they still wouldn't hear it?"  
  
"I believe it was three hundred dollars, sir, with my accumulated store discounts and protection fees." Rude answered, a dreamy note coming into his voice as he spoke of his gun.  
  
"Fair enough," Tseng said, shooting Yuffie a venomous look. "That's your new budget. You're to go secure me a new car that does not have the remnants of your headlights lodges in the drivers side door, with that money. And I'm going to assume I want it with the letters 'BMW' located at least six different locations on the exterior."  
  
Yuffie blinked, opening her mouth to object to the unfairness of the assignment. Idly, Tseng reached his hand out, into which Kevin the secretary slapped an all too familiar looking manila folder. Tseng opened the folder, revealing the materia catalog lodged within, and showed it to Yuffie, who promptly lodged her jaw back up into its original position. "Right away," she said meekly, and when Tseng held up the catalog again, she sighed. "Sir." 


	5. File 5: Vehicular Homicide

Black smoke curled like fingers of the damned, entertwining with air and crushing oxygen between their mighty mist knuckles. The smoke, and a considerably large amount of towering flames, was rising from the underside of a 67' ThunderCougarFalconBird, which was widely accepted as the most masculine car that could be owned without obtaining a special zoning permit. The smoke- and flames- had slightly less distance to travel until they reached the sky than usual, seeing as the car was conveniently positioned upside down, wheels pointed towards the heavens.  
  
About ten feet away, with her hands down by her sides and her jaw dropped in absolute shock, stood Yuffie Kisargi. She stared at the twisted shell of what used to be a muscle car in abject horror, and momentarily wondered whether or not this would cause her insurance to go up. She doubted it, considering it wasn't even her car. And she didn't have a license. Or insurance.  
  
Shadows bounced off to her left as a lone figure, lithe and pale, slowly made its way up to her side. The figure happened to form the exact shape and color scheme of a man known as Reno Tremaine, who was widely accepted as owning the most phallic weapon that could be possessed that still packed enough power that it wasn't allowed to be openly commented on. He stood silently next to the newest Turk for several minutes, his chest heaving slightly with every breathe, his eyes wide behind his crooked sunglasses.  
  
Eventually, he reached down and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket, sliding the sole cancer stick from its pouch and tossing the entire remaining package over his shoulder. He placed the cigarette between his lips and searched for his lighter for just a few moments before realizing he had none. With a shrug he plucked the cylinder from his mouth and approached the inferno that had once been a vehicle, extending the cigarette so the tip brushed the middle of the flames, and instantly crumpled into glowing red ember.  
  
Yuffie watched him return to her side in awe and major irritation. She knew that when he did speak, it wasn't going to be good for her. In fact, it would probably involve her mother, several references to dogs, and at least three recommendations of places she could put her chakram- none of which being the custom made leather chakram holder she had bought herself as a gift for securing a paying job at last.   
  
That paying job, however, seemed in more danger than the family of groundhogs who were even now burrowing ever down to escape the metal vessel of death that had landed on their home. She tried to resist the urge to stare in open fear at Reno as he puffed on his cigarette, failed utterly, and ended up visibly wincing when he finally ground the cancer stick out on his sleeve and tossed it away.  
  
"So," he said, "looks like it's going to rain."  
  
Yuffie stared at him, lost for words, and then simply nodded. When her non-verbal reply didn't seem to satisfy him, she vocalized it. "Uh-huh."  
  
"So that, uh, will probably put out the fire," Reno continued, with that very fire dancing off his sunglasses.  
  
"...probably." Yuffie agreed, happy to at least have proof that Reno realized there was a car under all that fire.  
  
"Did the gas tank already blow?" Reno asked, his voice continuing its maddening steadiness.  
  
"Not sure." Yuffie said, trying to mimic his calm and failing utterly as her voice practically broke on every syllable. "I blacked out a few times."  
  
"That'll do it," Reno said with an experienced nod, not really explaining what 'it' was. "I'm just sayin', cause if the tank didn't already blow then we probably should take a few steps back to avoid... you know... death."  
  
Yuffie stared at him. He stared back. As one, they both turned and stared at the car. With a shrug, they took a few steps back.   
  
"You know," Reno said, "it's sort of a shame."  
  
Here it is, Yuffie thought, with something surprisingly like relief. The guilt trip. The yelling. The screaming. Possibly a few shoves, which would lead to slapping, which would most likely lead to fire side wild sex which would ultimately lead to forgiveness. "Look," she said, the words spilling out of her, "I'm really sor-"  
  
"-it was only a mile away from rolling over to ten thousand."  
  
Yuffie stopped, her jaw snapping shut. How the hell was she was supposed to respond to that? Offer to buy him a car that was already at the nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine mile point? It wouldn't be the same. Typical Reno would find something small that would stop her apology for something big dead in its tracks.   
  
"Are the keys still in it?" he asked.  
  
"I... they... why?" Yuffie asked, eyeing him with the sudden thought that he might have gone insane at the sight of his vehicles destruction.  
  
"No real reason," he said, reaching for another cigarette and finding his jacket empty. Something about that seemed like the biggest tragedy of the day. "There is just a lot of useful things you can do with keys. Lock doors. Unlock doors. Start cars. Slash someone's cheek open so they have cool little scars like me. Of course, I can only do one of those things now. Unless the keys are still in the car. At which point I can do none of them."  
  
Yuffie closed her eyes, her cheeks reddening. "I'm really, truly, very, sorr-"  
  
Reno paused as she spoke and took a deep breath, "I wonder how much change was in the ash tray."  
  
"Stop it!" Yuffie exploded, kicking him in the shin just for emphasis. He went down cursing and clutching his assaulted limb, and in the mass of profanities and pain his sunglasses came loose, falling beneath his shifting mass. There was an audible crunching sound as he landed, achieving what a high speed collision with a dozen fists could not- shattering his opticals. "Now listen... if you're going to stop with all the asinine little comments about your odometer and cheek slashing, I want to apologize for-"  
  
"Apologize?" Reno roared from his spot on the ground. "Apologize!?" He pushed his way up to his feet, his newly exposed eyes blazing in all their bloodshot splendor. "Do you really think an apology can cover this? Do you really, truly believe that an apology can take back all the damage you have caused here today? The lives you've ruined?"  
  
Yuffie paused. "By lives, you mean yours, right?"  
  
Reno glared at her. "Right."  
  
"Look," Yuffie said, her arms wide in an act of submission. "I'm truly sorry I wrecked your car."  
  
Reno stared at her like she had three eyes. And one of those eyes was Cloud Strife. So, technically, she had a total of four eyes, since her third eye would be a whole other person with two eyes of his own. "My car?" he said, a low chuckle rumbling into his voice that was already filled with disbelief. "My car?? Who gives a flying fuck about my car? You made me break my sunglasses!"  
  
"So what!?" Yuffie cried, throwing her hands up. "That car looks like it would take at least thirty killings and a kidnapping to buy! You found your sunglasses stuck to the bottom of a movie theater seat by what we only hope was a mixture of blood and chewing gum."  
  
"These glasses," he uttered with a rumbling growl deep in his throat, "have got me more action than that car ever could have."  
  
"Are you kidding?" Yuffie asked, glancing back at the car. "That is a hot car."  
  
"Literally," Reno said quickly, and a little dryly, pressing his lips together. "Where were you taking it, anyway? Your note just seemed to be a tangled mess of the words 'taking' and 'turkey'..."  
  
"I, uh," Yuffie suddenly winced as she remembered her destination. "Was taking it to the car lot. I needed to get Tseng a new car."  
  
"Oh." Reno said, and then promptly burst out laughing, while the Wutain ninja glared at him with her hands on her hips. She was forced to keep glaring for what turned out to be an obscenely long time, as the red haired Turk eventually lost all the wind keeping him up and collapsed to the dirt below, holding his sides and chuckling into the very earth.  
  
"What," Yuffie asked with a raised eyebrow, "is so god damn funny?'  
  
"He wasn't sending you to get a new car..." Reno said between deep gasps of breath, "he was trying to kill you."  
  
Yuffie blinked. Swallowed. Blinked again. "What?"  
  
"Oh, don't take it personally..." Reno pushed up to his feet, wiping the dust from his suit, but his hands had landed in a more unfortunate puddle of mud upon his landing, so in effect he only succeeded in painting over the filth with filth. "He does it all the time. Tried to bump me off twice last week. It's his way of keeping us sharp. He knew I didn't care about the car, so he slipped a bomb into it."  
  
Yuffie stared at him, wide eyed. "Are you people insane? Is that your problem?"  
  
Reno patted her on the arm, twice, spreading just enough dirt on her shoulder that she would have to wash the jacket as soon as she got home. When he pulled his palm back and saw the results of his reassurance, he shrugged, and quickly traced his name in the mound of dirt. "We'll train you up yet," he said with a smile that was only slightly manic. "In this business, insane is just another word for proactive." 


	6. File 6: Code Words

Reno sat with as much quiet dignity as one could achieve when one was currently tied to a chair with a blindfold around one's eyes. The different between that amount and zero were surprisingly slim, but existent nonetheless. That slight degree of restraint was enough to keep Reno from actively drooling on himself as he hurled random insults out into the air around him, cursing everyone and everything he could think of. No one was more startled than he that almost all of that subject matter had to do with an Irish nun who used to teach at Midgars Academy for Trouble Teens, until being forced into early retirement when the amount of bricks going through her class room windows had begun to add up to more than the school could hire janitors to carry back out again.   
  
In the beginning, Reno hadn't minded her so much. In fact, during the brief seconds between the time she had walked into the door of the classroom and started speaking, he had been quite fond of the high cheekboned women with hair even brighter red than his. Then she made the mistake of beginning to talk- to *him*, no less- and the whole relationship had turned sour. Reno estimated that he spent more time locked in her classroom closet that year than he did trying to convince the Darcie twins that he also had an identical brother, by the name of Roy, and that Roy would make a good boyfriend for Anita, the sister of Jackie, who Reno himself was currently going out with. He and Roy had shared some good times.  
  
"And another thing," he snarled, not entirely anyone else was even in the room, "you looked stupid in that outfit. Like a fucking penguin. You wore sweaters in the middle of a god damn heat wave, and you dress like an Antarctic creature. What the fuck is wrong with you??"  
  
Reno paused, drawing breath and struggling furiously to come up with another insult that contained the word 'Antarctic'. However, as soon as he came up with one- and he was particularly proud of it too, it was a rhyming number that suggested where exactly she could place her icicles- a voice penetrated the piece of cloth that wrapped around his eyes and back over his ears. The voice was deep, commanding, and very very familiar. The voice belonged to the man Reno had once accidentally shot in the ankle and had the short God damned temper to actually get upset about it.  
  
"Why don't you try being quiet?" Rude asked with an almost amused hint to his voice. "I do it all the time. It works wonders."  
  
"Why don't you try sucking my dick?" Reno barked back at him harshly. "Come on, don't be shy. I can get my fly down without using my hands, its a great trick. Your mother taught me."  
  
Rude didn't respond to the biting insult, as they both knew full well that Rude was the leading runner when it came to bad mouthing his mother. Something about being left in a train station in lower Midgar can have a lasting impact on a kid, especially when it has been running on thirteen years that she was late in coming to pick him up again. "Come on, Reno," he said, his voice infused with warmth. "You know how to get out of this. Tell me the password."  
  
"You know what I know?" Reno asked, his voice louder than usual thanks to the ear mufflers. "I know that the last girl you went out with liked to have her ear lobe nibbled while she rode me like a god damn rocking horse, that's what I know. I know your dick is so damn small that the two of you had been fucking for months but she still had her cherry, *that* is what I kn-"  
  
"-OK, let's play a little game." Rude said, having to force himself from grinding his teeth. Taylor *had* liked having her ear lobe nibbled, though how Reno could have gotten hold of that little piece of information was beyond Rude. Somehow the sharpshooter doubted that Reno had learned it the obvious way, considering upon their first meeting Reno had accidentally-on-purpose managed to dump a half full pitcher of ice water onto the white T-shirt of the girl. Somehow, Rude doubted, the aftermath where he offered to wring it dry we she was still wearing it had helped his chances any.  
  
"Goody." Reno said sarcastically. "I like games. Though that Uncle Pennybags creeps me the hell out. What kind of millionaire needs to have a canon? That monocle wearing bastard was up to something, I'm telling you."  
  
Ignoring everything said after the first word, Rude began to walk circles around the sitting Reno with slow, deliberate steps. "Your name is Reno Tremaine, and you work for the Turks."  
  
Reno paused. "Yes."  
  
"Your official job description is project engineer, though more often than not the only thing you engineer is an excuse as to why you riddled the place with machine gun bullets as opposed to simply going in the back door."  
  
No pause this time. "Yes."  
  
"You are aware that once a year, Tseng will give us a password in the morning and give the other instructions to obtain that password from the first. He claims it gives him valuable information about our strengths and weaknesses, but we both agree that he is a sadistic bastard who just enjoys playing God with our day off."  
  
"Yes. The dick."  
  
"...we also agree that it is a far better ritual than an annual performance review."  
  
In his ropes and binds, Reno shuddered. "God yes."  
  
Rude nodded. They were making progress. He had tried this exact speel a few hours ago and gotten nothing but numbers in response, and a few hours before that had yielded Reno telling the story of the first time he had managed to tie his shoes correctly, and how much more satisfactory it had been than the second.  
  
"You also know that at the end of the day, whoever has succeeded- the man holding the password or the man taking it- gets a thousand dollar bonus and the week off. Whoever fucks up loses the thousand dollars from his pay that month, and has to fill in for the others duties for seven days. Correct?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And that I've always... always... ended up winning, no matter what side of the game I'm on, year in and year out. Correct?"  
  
"Unfortunately."  
  
"Good. So lets make this easy. You like things easy, don't you?" Rude asked, disgusted at how closely he resembled a used car salesman.   
  
"Mostly your mom," Reno said, then seemed to remember he had already insulted Rude's mother to little effect. "And your daughter. You know, whenever she happens to be born and grows old enough that she'll be sporting actual tits."  
  
"I'll take that as a yes," Rude said. "So all I want to know is the password. What is the password?"  
  
"Don't know." Reno said instantly.  
  
"The password is 'Don't know'?" Rude asked.  
  
"No." Reno responded, almost triumphantly.  
  
"You don't know what the password is?" Rude asked.  
  
"No."  
  
"Did you forget?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Are you lying?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Was *that* lying?"  
  
"No."  
  
Rude growled, and took a deep breath. This sort of thing usually lasted about five minutes with Reno, when the craving for a cigarette kicked in and the annoyance of constantly being kicked in the ribs began to register, but this year seemed to be different. They had been at this for over eight hours, and in between his various distraction techniques and insults, Reno had managed to maintain a staunch position of not knowing the password.  
  
"So you are telling me that Tseng never told you the password?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Yes, Tseng told you the password?"  
  
"No."  
  
"No?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Yes, yes he did?"  
  
"...no."  
  
Cracking his knuckles in an effort to restrain himself from wrapping his sizable hands around Reno's throat, Rude sighed heftily, and tried again, hoping the sheer repetition would eventually wear his red haired friend down.  
  
"So, Reno. I was wandering around town the other day, and I look in the window of a thrift store, and *what is the God damn password!?*"  
  
Reno blinked up at him from behind his blindfold with an indignant look on his face, almost as if he was insulted by such an obvious ploy that didn't event involve alcohol.  
  
"I. Don't. Know."  
  
Rude barely heard him over the sound of his own grinding teeth  
  
***  
  
The Wutain were weird people, Rude reasoned. They were always talking about creation, about moving forward, about big steps in this area of technology, and giant leaps in that one. God knows every product you bought that had even a hint of plastic in it had the words 'Made in Wutai' printed proudly across its surface. However, they were in a full sprint to get away from something that wasn't so bad. Out of all the major nations, Rude had to say he liked Wutais past the best.  
  
"I think you know how this work," Rude said to Reno calmly, hovering above the other man like an executioner, the usual black hood replaced by sunglasses instead. "Wutain water torture. Drip. Drip. Drip. Onto the forehead, second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour. First its an itch, then an irritant, then a sting... sooner or later each drop feels like a sledge hammer blow between your eyes. Your skin will practically be unmarked, but you'll feel like there's a crater in your head the size of a watermelon."  
  
Reno glared up at Rude from his new position- the chair he was tied to having been kicked back so it was tilted over the sink. "The password is cheese." He said calmly.  
  
"You always were bad at making up passwords," Rude responded with a simple shake of his head. "I guess were going to have to do this thing. Only thing is, the water line is broken, and I'm saving the ice cubes in the freezer as a back up, so were going to do this with coffee. I'm sure the boiling temperatures wont inhibit the process any."  
  
Eyes closed tightly and jaw clenched, Reno awaited the inevitable as Rude set up a dripping apparatus above him. It seemed to be home made, various different materials peaking out from beneath the final black paint job the sharpshooter had slapped on it. Rude grabbed a pot and upended it into the top of the device, and the torture began.  
  
Drip... drip... drip...  
  
It was hot, Reno had to admit, but nothing too bad. As a kid, the running game had been using a piece of glass to focus the sun on the back of your hand, and whoever dropped their glass first was the loser. The game had begun to come so natural to Reno he'd started making little designs in his skin with the inevitable circles of burnt skin.  
  
Drip... drip... drip...  
  
Just a little tickle, it would be nothing if he could wipe it away. Of course he couldn't, and he reckoned that was the point, but if he could... then the little stinging sensation would go away. All he'd have to do was lift his hand and press it to his head and wipe, and all the discomfort would be gone, if his _fucking_ arms weren't tied down...  
  
Drip... drip... drip...  
  
OK, that was enough of this, Reno snarled in his own head. He'd played Rudes little game, but he'd taken all the steamy caffeinated beverage to the forehead he felt like for this day. He opened his mouth to tell Rude so, but suddenly the sensation stopped, and the coffee that had begun to pool in the worry lines on his forehead suddenly ran slick down his temples, leaving bare a small red mark that had started to form.   
  
Reno opened his eyes, looking at Rude in surprise. Rude, for his part, simply stood scowling at the machine. "That's it?" Reno asked.  
  
"Elena got to the coffee before I could," Rude said almost huffily. "There was only half a cup left. I was hoping I could psyche you out."  
  
"Didn't it occur to you to make more?" Reno asked, not entirely sure why he has aiding in his own torture.  
  
"Yes." Rude said gruffly. "But by the time I got to the pantry, Elena had discovered that the coffee beans were chocolate covered. She sucked them down like a vacuum cleaner."  
  
Reno laughed, and then froze. "So I guess you need to let me go, right?"  
  
Rude stared at him, malice gleaming behind his glasses. "What's your second guess?"  
  
***  
  
"Ow." Reno muttered quietly, for the thirtieth time in a row. Rude gave him a confident smirk, one that had the words 'just tell me the fucking password, Red' seeped throughout, but the red haired Turk simply stuck his tongue out at the man, his middle fingers currently being tied down.  
  
Rude stood with a small wire that still glowed white with the heat of the stove. He crouched over Renos face with the delicacy of a lover, but the intent of a psychopath, as he touched the wire to his best friends skin in tiny strands of contact. Rude gave the wire an appraising look, as if to make sure it was still hot enough, and then swiped it across Reno's skin yet again.  
  
"Ow." Reno said.  
  
"OK, that's done," Rude said, tossing the wire into his sink- were it the glowing hot tip quickly fizzled out in a small sweat diluted puddle of coffee. Reno sighed in relief, the continuing fiery touch to his face seconds away from making him scream out random words from the dictionary until he could convince Rude that he had given him the right one.   
  
"Thank fucking Christ," snarled Reno, knowing it was a bad idea but not really caring. Fuck Rude and his little wire, he thought, and his fucking vacation. There are certain things that go a bit far, and an hour and a half of agonizing cheek tickling was damn close to crossing the line. "Finally realized I could take the heat, huh?"  
  
"Not really," Rude said with a shrug, "I just finished with my picture." He reached behind him, felt around on the counter, and grabbed the massive butcher knife that lay there. Reno winced noticeably as his captor snatched up the weapon, but Rude only angled it so it flashed his captives reflection back at him, causing his jaw to drop and his mind to reel. Why didn't you just fucking *stab me*!?, Reno's mind screamed in terror.  
  
"That... that's a penis..." he managed to say, his voice hoarse due to a vice grip constricted throat.   
  
"It certainly is," Rude said, admiring his handiwork. It had taken longer than he'd expected, but he'd managed to burn quite a detailed phallus into Reno's cheek. Even if Reno did give him the password now, and get some salve on there as quickly as possible, he would have blisters forming the shape of a dick on his face for at least a week.   
  
"You son of a bitch!" Reno snarled. "I don't know the fucking password! I will *kill* you!"  
  
"Now, now," Rude said, clucking his tongue like a chiding mother. "That sounds like a man who wants a pair of testicles to go along with his new tattoo."  
  
Heat be damned, Reno reckoned, this just got serious. As Rude grabbed a new wire and placed it on the searing coil of his oven, Reno took a deep breath, and began to scream.  
  
***  
  
One dangling set of balls later, and Reno still hadn't spoken. Even when Rude had added long stringy hairs to the image, utilizing quick squiggly streaks with the wire, all he'd gotten out of his friend was hisses of pain and long, rambling streams of curses, most of which involved Rude's fingers and a baltine hammer. As amusing as the activity had been, Rude was quickly growing frustrated. He only had two hours left until the deadline, and it was time to go to utilize some drastic measures.  
  
***  
  
"OK, games over." Reno said, his voice practically squeaking in nervousness. He tried to roll his eyes down to see his current affliction, but Rude had stuck his long red ponytail in a drawer and slammed it shut to prevent any such vision. An interesting side effect was that he couldn't see Rude either, and wasn't entirely sure the man hadn't simply left Reno to his fate and gone to get a few drinks. Until now, Reno hadn't realized how important this exersise was to his partner.  
  
"I'm serious man, fun is fun, but its time to cut this out. You are going to cause permanent damage here!" Reno yelled, and then waited. Nothing. Not a word, not a cough, not a footstep. If Rude was anywhere near him, he was sitting as still as a piece of God damn plywood, which would actually not be too out of character for the man. Reno decided he would try one last plea, an ultimate emotion stirrer that would reach the soul of even the most heartless individual.  
  
"I can't feel my dick!"  
  
Icy. Lots of it. Cubes. Big honking chunks that felt like they had been stuck to the bottom of some semi truck since winter and had just been busted off with the aide of a blow torch and a crowbar. Tiny, mean little slivers that felt like they had a life of their own and were working their way inwards into flesh, as if they were suicidal trying to burn themselves alive by finding the highest degree within slithering distance. Ice of all sorts, and all colors- why not, he reckoned, he might as well assume they were technicolored. He couldn't see them anyway- had been packed tightly around his crotch, placed there with the delicacy and care of a devoutly heterosexual man.  
  
At first it hadn't been so bad. At first meaning about four seconds from the time the first piece had been slid into place. And from then on, agony. There was a reason, Reno reasoned, people wore pants. There was even a reason that people who weren't him wore underpants. Something deep in the human condition, he believed, was dedicated purely to the action of keeping the genitals warm. His condition was current going into seizures. Frosty, painful seizures.  
  
"The password is chalk!" Reno cried out, thinking back to passwords from yesteryear so he wouldn't repeat any. "Board! Meeting! Room! Service! Station! Train! Take your fucking pick and get me a hair dryer!"  
  
Hearing him scream but not catching a single believable word in the list was Rude, who stood silently behind him with his arm crossed, a worried look on his face and a watch in his hand. The look said that he did not have much time left to get Reno to reveal the true password. The watch said the same thing, but to a more specific detail. He had two minutes. One hundred and twenty seconds. One hundred and sixteen, after he'd taken the time to translate the minutes into seconds.  
  
He continued to watch as Reno continued to squirm, and the clock continued to click. A single bead of sweat formed on Rude's forehead, running down the bare surface easily. He hadn't expected things to go this far. Legitimate worry began to rise up about sterilizing his friend- an act which would no doubt be a favor to the world at large, but would probably drive the read head to blow him away with a shotgun in the middle of the night. With sixty seconds left, Rude simply hurled the watch away, smashing into the wall where it explodes into a million tiny gears and springs.  
  
He rounded Reno in one big bound, stopping dead and bracing down. He launched out of his new position like a jungle cat, striking his friend in the chest and flipping the chair over in mid air so it landed backdown, sandwiching Reno between Rudes massive bulk and the cold floor, sending ice flying as the bald Turk grabbed the front of Reno's jacket in both hands and shook him wildly, screaming. "Tell me the password! Damnit, Reno! Tell me the fucking password! Tell me!!"  
  
A single ding rang out, and all the air ran out of Rude as if he were a popped balloon. Time was up. For the first time ever, he had lost. Reno, his hearing currently inhibited by an acute ringing sensation from his contact with the ground, continued to stare at Rude in trepidated worry, but the bald Turk simply sled off him and lay on the ground in defeat, breathing heavily.  
  
So it was that the first thing either man saw of her was her shoe, a bright red sneaker as opposed to the official Turk regulation brown hush puppy. They're eyes traveled upward, quickly past the knees and dwelling a bit on the thighs before going all the way up to meet the laughing brown eyes of Yuffie Kisargi who stared down at them with unmasked superiority. In her hands she held a chunk of cash, which she was thumbing through as if they were LSD laced.  
  
"I think I'm going to get the hang of working here yet," she said with a smirk. "Though it would have been more fun if either of you had at least tried to get the password out of me."  
  
Rude and Reno both stared at her in absolute shock, their eyes wide, their jaws hanging loosely around their pelvises.   
  
"Do you wanna hear it?" Yuffie asked, mistaking their horror for confusion and dying to get the secret she'd had to keep for twenty four hours under her hat out in the open. "You probably could have guessed it. It was-"  
  
She was drowned out by a sudden scream of pain as Reno managed to launch his body and chair package like a spear into his best friend and began to try his damnedest to bite the mans nose off, straining against his ropes so hard a vein was popping out of his forehead.  
  
"Huh." Yuffie said, watching the two struggle on the ground. Reno had managed to get some skin between his teeth, but now Rude had two hands up, wrapped tightly around the throat of the red head. "Guess they don't really care about this game." 


	7. File 7: Indirected Proposal

The man's name was Paul Larson. He had been born on the shores of Junon at seven pounds, three ounces, to the proud parents Jack Larson, and Doll Larson- maiden name Chang. When he was seven, he had broken his left fibula the first time he had tried to ride a bike through an oak tree, and had managed to reaggravate the injury on the following eight attempts, leaving a highly operated upon bone that ached when it rained and would get sore at the slightest provocation.  
  
So it was probably lucky that the rail road spike, which was staying upright by what seemed to be only the gravitational pull caused by Paul's terrified shaking, had been positioned over his right hand as opposed to near the oft injured skeletal component. Lucky in the same form that finding a dollar on the street because you were thrown ten feet through the air by a semi truck only to land on top of it, but lucky nonetheless.  
  
"How hard," Reno said, pausing only for effect as he continued to pace around the terrified Paul. His ordeal with Rude had awakened a hunger for this sort of work again, so when the well endowed stewardess had come in demanding they find out where her husband went while she was away on her job only to find Tseng out of the office, Reno had been nice enough to step in and take the job at half his usual fee. Though she had been a bit uncomfortable performing a sexual favor in order to find out whether or not her spouse was being faithful, she had been appreciative that she hadn't had to do it on video tape. Suddenly, Reno snapped out of that happy memory, and realized he was in the middle of a threat. "Do you think I would need to swing this to drive it clean through the table?"  
  
The question was purely rhetorical, of course. It didn't have to be, but considering that Paul's mouth was currently stuffed full of some rapidly unpleasant textured panty hose, that is the way the question stood in this particular situation. Eyes white in fear, Paul let loose with a half hearted mumble and continued to count the steps of his captor in his head, hoping that the inane exercise would keep his mind off the massive sledge hammer Reno had clutched in his hands.  
  
The sledge hammer wasn't necessary, of course. In fact, it was almost counter productive to the cause of driving spikes through something as vulnerable as flesh, bone, and wood, due to the fact that after it put the spike through the hammer itself would almost certainly follow suit, producing a much larger hole than the spike had intended. Still, Reno thought, he had just been begging for someone to direct the words 'over compensation' at him all this week. Just begging.  
  
After placing his foot distinctly on Paul's right leg, Reno leaned in close, his blood shot eyes narrowing as an evil smile split his face. He whispered a quick, alcohol infused goodbye to the man's ability to shoot a bow and arrow, before lifting the hammer high up and above his head, not feeling bothered for a second that the gag's continued stay in his captive's mouth prevented all possible halt to what was about to happen.  
  
"DAMNIT TURKEY!" Yuffie stormed into the room wearing nothing but a towel and a frown, her hair sopping wet and precipitation dripping from her skin, giving her the distinct look of someone who had recently been in the presence of liquid. "YOU USED UP ALL THE HOT WATER IN THE SHOWER AGAIN!"  
  
The Shin-Ra headquarters bathroom was a thing of legend. Open to anyone in a blue suit who needed it, Tseng's incessant attention to detail and utter inability to exist in an enviroment that ranked below spotless had long since lead to the hiring of a cleaning service that focussed on that room alone. Though Reno had been doing his best to counter act the irritating shine that the entire room seemed to hold with frequent usage, it appeared his extra long shower after receiving his latest clients payment had a side effect besides cleaning him off and dirtying up the place. And, since the bathroom was clean on the other side of the building, it meant Yuffie was pissed enough about it to march all the way across the place while half naked.  
  
Reno blinked at her disbelievingly, not just because she was currently showing more leg than he thought she actually had, but because she had interrupted the big dramatic moment before he 'accidentally' knocked the mans gag out and received not only the exact details of the mans travels while his wife was at work, but definitely enough offered money that he could afford to rewire his whole EMR. The thing had started shooting an extra puff of sparks out after electrocuting someone, a fact which he found revoltingly similar to orgasm, and the last thing he needed in life was another connection between sex and murder.  
  
"Uh, Yuffie," he said slowly, "I'm sort of busy right now."  
  
"You," she hissed at him, jabbing a finger at his chest and hoisting the towel up another inch, rapidly nearing the point where she might just want to use it as a turban for all the good it would do her. "Were apparently sort of busy this morning. In the shower. For about a half hour. Now look, I know it takes longer standing up, but maybe you could order some of those Viagrabation pills or something."  
  
From his spot in the chair and behind the gag, Paul chuckled. Reno instantly shot him a look that was both furious and pleased, because it had been a long time since the red haired Turk had felt justified in using the railroad spike with the salt coating. Using that glance as a parting remark, Reno seized Yuffie by the upper arm and drug her from the room, slamming the door behind them.  
  
"I can't believe," he snarled at her, "you just ruined my interrogation."  
  
"And I can't believe," she snarled back, "I had to take a shower using cold water."  
  
Idly, Reno glanced down at her towel, then looked back up with a triumphant smirk. "The basic laws of human anatomy beg to differ."  
  
Even later, when the spot she had smacked him had started to swell, Reno was particularly proud of catching her off guard with that statement.  
  
"You are so inconsiderate!" she yelled at him.  
  
"And you are such a brat!" he yelled right back.  
  
"Turkey," she growled.  
  
"Klepto," he retorted.  
  
"Jerk!"  
  
"Jail bait!"  
  
"Asshole!"  
  
"Cheerleader!"  
  
Yuffies eyes widened. "That was low," she muttered, not because she didn't want him to hear but because the low murmur was all he needed to do so. The two had gotten closer together in the course of their yelling, and were both currently experiencing the unpleasant sensation of having your forehead pressed against the forehead of another human being, and were thus forcing themselves to remember that no matter what their vision currently told them, the other person was not really a cyclops.  
  
They decided to rectify the temporary illusion by seeing if the other one happened to taste like a cyclops, but after several minutes of frantic, flushed kissing that featured Reno cursing the God that made towels so hard to send fluttering into non-existence, Yuffie realized she still didn't feel any better about the fact she had woken up to a brisk morning ice bath. Besides, the light was bouncing off something in Reno's ear, and it was getting really distracting when she tried to nibble the lobe. Angrily, she pushed him back away, and he leered at her. "If we are going down this route again," he said, "I'm going to need to go find some handcuffs."  
  
"Reno," she asked, her voice falling in sudden surprised recognition, and utterly ignoring his lewd statement, "why are you wearing one of my earrings?"  
  
He blinked at her once, then again. For some reason that question seemed odder than her bursting in on him half naked while he tortured a potentially unfaithful husband, a service his wife had paid with via a service of her own. "I damn well better not be."  
  
"Funny," she said, "I thought the same thing as that. Except you are. Right now."  
  
Idly, he reached up and grabbed his ear, expertly uncinched the jewelry from it and pulled it down for closer inspection. He dangled it in front of the light for a moment, and then gave a surprised sort of snort. "Huh, that's odd."  
  
"Why were you in my jewelry box?" Yuffie asked him icily.  
  
"Why would you say that?" Reno asked, and then realized a denial might have been a better response.  
  
"Well, call me crazy," Yuffie said slowly, "but when I keep something in a little box, and then I see someone else with that something, I assume that someone interacted with the little box in some form or another."  
  
Reno paused, giving her a speculative look. "Are you coming onto me?" he asked.  
  
"Oh shut up!" she yelled. "I want to know what you were doing in my stuff, and I want to know now!"  
  
"Are you sure?" he asked, voice rising almost as if he were challenging her.  
  
"Yes!" she screamed at him, grabbing the front of his shirt in both hands and shaking him, only stopping when she saw him produce a dark black velvet box and hold it out in front of her nose.   
  
"Well," he said, "I was trying to find out what size to have this made in."  
  
Hands shaking, Yuffie reached up and seized the box, pulling it to her as if the container itself was what she coveted. A moment later, she snapped it open, revealing a sparkling golden band riddled with small red jewels that were so obviously...  
  
"...summon materia," she said breathlessly, "my favorite." She paused for a moment, looking almost sick, and then dove into Reno's arms, wrapping her own around his neck and pulling him tight to her in a truly involving outburst, though the fact she tucked the ring safely away in her towel first was not lost on the red haired Turk. "Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes!"  
  
Feeling suddenly a bit dry throated, Reno opened his mouth to say something in response, but was instantly cut off by another stream of ecstatic babble. "You have no idea what a turn on little bits of crystallized mako are. Seriously. As soon as I some clothes on I'm going to get this validated as real at the local pawn shop, and then confirm its not stolen at the police station, and then I am going to wear your pelvis clean through."  
  
And with that she was gone, in a cloud of youthful bubliness and matured greed, leaving Reno looking after her with a rather dazed expression. He remained that way for some time until Tseng walked up behind him and put a comforting arm around his shoulders, still quite stunned himself at what he had viewed and overhead over the headquarters security system.  
  
"Did you just give her the engagement ring Rudes trying to keep hidden from Elena?" he asked Reno calmly.  
  
"Yep."  
  
"So you're going to have to pay to get him a new one." Tseng continued.  
  
"Yep."  
  
  
  
"One that's more expensive to appeal the fact that you gave it away," Tseng went on, though he was fairly sure financial situations were the least of his employees problem.  
  
"Yep."  
  
"But still looks worse so Yuffie doesn't demand a better one," Tseng said, thinking aloud.  
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
"And there is, of course, the whole part where you need to get out of this marriage, probably bringing down kicks to the genitals and possibly being lit on fire as you sleep," Tseng said in one breath, nearly shaking pity.  
  
"Maybe..."  
  
"Or you could submit yourself to a life where you get everything you get now, except your taxes are higher and you never get to be alone."  
  
"Yes," Reno said, his shoulders slumped, "That is what I meant by maybe."  
  
Tseng nodded, content to simply bask in the misery of his friend, but then a sudden bout of curiosity overcame him that he couldn't ignore. "What were you *really* doing in her jewelry box?"  
  
Reno shrugged, "Looking for a place to store crystal meth."  
  
Tseng raised an eyebrow, having not really asked the question that occurred to him, "May I ask...?"  
  
Reno glanced over at him with the empty eyes of a damned man. "For the love of God why I gave her the ring?"  
  
"That's what I was going to ask, yes."  
  
With a resigned look upon his face, Reno briefly wondered if he could talk Paul into shooting him, especially after he told him how he'd got to third base with his wife about two hours ago. "...it seemed easier than arguing with her" 


	8. File 8: Unstable Grounds

A/N: I 


	9. File 9: Anxiousness

"Look you poor son of a bitch," Reno snarled venomously at the slumped over figure who sat in the chair behind the rooms only piece of furniture- an 18th century cherry wood desk. The dark blue jacket their captive was wearing was slicked with sweat and what could have easily been blood, the former of which caused by a massive heat lamp that dangled from a single wire from the ceiling. It cast a funnel of eery red light down over the unfortunate man, who didn't even seem to be listening to Reno's rampage. "We know you know. You know that we know that you know. And so on. So fuckin' tell us already, or I'll take that cute little pistol we took from you and start blowing your fingers off, starting with the index."  
  
His threat completed, Reno pulled his red hair back and out of his eyes with one hand, wiping his mouth with the other. Intimidation speeches always made him salivate, though whether or not it was the simple fact he was speaking or some sort of yearning to complete the acts he threatened was something he really didn't want to think about. Plagued by a sudden self doubt, he backed away from the desk and allowed his partner to step in, fulfilling his part of a ritual as old as crime itself.  
  
"Look," Rude said, in his short, halting voice, "I know this isn't any good. Believe me, I wanted to just bribe you, but my assosiate there..." Rude gestured over at the red haired Turk, who had slunk into the shadows and was quickly lighting a cigarette, "is a little tight with the gil. I apologize. Still, this can all end pretty quickly... all we need from you is the name of your employer."  
  
The captive stared at him resolutely, his lips pressed tightly together. Rude heaved a sigh, and took a step back, almost as if he expected something to come flying from behind him- possibly the five pound Bible he had specicially instructed Reno to throw in such an occasion as this- but nothing appeared. Rolling his eyes behind his ever-present sunglasses, Rude stepped forward again, speaking in the tone teenagers use when they discuss shoplifting amongst themselves.  
  
"Come on," he wheedled, "you don't even like the guy. Yeah, we did our homework... I liked you, so I looked some things up. Your boss is a prick, he rides your ass every day and doesn't give you a red cent extra for overtime. You know that. What you don't know is this guy has been bad mouthing you in every meeting, board review, and promotional discussion since he caught you checking out his daughters legs at the company picnic. You'd be a partner right now if it wasn't for that asshole."  
  
Something in the eyes of the prisoner wavered, but it apparently wasn't enough. Confident that he had set this up perfectly for the kill, and Reno's alcohol-laden speel about how hot it gets in the center of a gasoline fire lit with a home rolled cigarette, Rude crossed his arms in apparent defeat and glanced back over his shoulder.  
  
A minute later he was still glancing.  
  
"Oh screw it," he barked, finally drawing the attention of his partner, who looked up from the spot on the floor he had been eyeing with a stare. Rude turned back to the man, drew a gun, and pointed it directly at his lap. "Your boss has also been fucking your wife," he stated simply, "and if you ever want to do it yourself again, you'll tell me his name."  
  
The man's eyes narrowed. "Phill Connor," he said simply.  
  
"Thank you," Rude said, returning his gun to its holster. He marched across the room to where Reno was standing, and calmly placed his hands on the man's shoulders, shoving him backwards and sending him flying. For a brief moment, it looked like Reno was going to be able to catch himself, but a wire trashcan struck the back of his legs and sent him crashing to the ground, where he landed with a somehow still intact and lit cigarette.  
  
"Hey," Reno said, staring up through bleary eyes, "ow."  
  
"You're an idiot," Rude growled, "and the fact you're currently completely wasted doesn't excuse that. What's your problem, anyway?"  
  
"...wuddum dayt..."  
  
Rude blinked, and on instinct, kicked Reno lightly in the side. Groaning more from effort than pain, the red haired Turk rolled over and propped himself up against the wall. "What did you say?" Rude demanded.  
  
"Wedding date," Reno clarified, coughing to clear his throat.  
  
"Wedding date?" Rude asked increduously.  
  
"Wedding date," Reno confirmed.  
  
"As in," Rude asked, "Yuffie and you have set one?"  
  
"As in," Reno countered, "Yuffie mumbled something random around my dick and I did what I'm inclined to do in such a situation- nodded and shut the fuck up. Unfortunately, I found out two days later when I overheard her booking the Pagoda that she had asked if I was cool with having a summer wedding."  
  
"Oh..." Rude muttered, voice filled with sympathy, before he snapped back to the present. "That still isn't an excuse for you forgetting your fucking cues!"  
  
"I didn't!" Reno barked, sounding offended.  
  
"What?" Rude asked, "then why didn't you... you know... take them?"  
  
"'Cause I didn't remember my lines," Reno said triumphantly, dragging himself to his feet, "I knew my cues just find."  
  
"Fucking brilliant," groaned his partner, who jerked in surprise as a sudden voice came from behind the two.  
  
"If you two are quite done," it came, not sounding at all like the frightened and weakened mumblings of a beaten prisoner who just condemned a co-worker to torment and death, "then you had better get this stupid heat lamp of yours turned off. I don't even want to imagine what it's doing to our energy bills."  
  
"Probably nothing compared to that hot tub you had installed in the back of your office," Reno growled in response, "and all you do in there is fuck Count Dr-"  
  
"Do you really," Tseng cut in quickly, his voice radiating with energy, "want to finish that sentence?"  
  
Reno opened his mouth as if ready to take the challenge laid out by his boss, but after a moment of locking eyes with his suddenly inflamed boss the red haired man simply looked down at the floor. "Yes," he said under his breath, "in the worst fucking way. But I won't."  
  
"Good," Tseng said, though whether he overheard Reno or simply took his silence as an answer it was hard to tell. He went to stand, brushing off his jacket, only to be cut off with a sudden jerk and looked down in annoyance. "Say," he muttered, "Reno? Considering that this was an excercise, don't you think that it was a little overboard to staple my tie to the desk?"  
  
"Maybe..." Reno said slowly, "but that depends what you mean. Do you mean the stapling itself, or the fact that I chose the most expensive piece of furniture in this entire building to staple you to?"  
  
"I mean," Tseng said slowly, "the fact that you used no less than forty two staples to accomplish the task."  
  
Grinning unapologetically, Reno cleared the office and grabbed the tie in both hands and pulled hard, easily detaching Tseng from the desk. Unfortunately his efforts did little to rectify the half pound block of wood that was now dangling from Tseng's neck by the delicate woven silk article, or the whole new problem of a gaping hole in the top of the piece of antique furniture. Deciding to ignore them both, Reno was suddenly very fascinated with some going on's on the carpet as Tseng undid his tie and tossed it away with disgust.  
  
"I don't like this," the Wutain man growled.  
  
"I'm not the one who bought you a piece of clothing at a Big and Tall store," Reno responded quickly, "you need to talk to Elena about that one."  
  
"I was referring," Tseng continued, waving Reno's comment off with a simple gesture, "to this side of you. If I was going to use three words to describe you, Reno, sloppy would certainly be in there. The way you dress, the way you eat... I'm fairly sure you have your pistol attached to your ankle with a length of electric chord as we speak... but never the way you work. Now I think I'll have to re-assess that opinion."  
  
"Oh Christ," Reno groaned, rubbing the back of his neck, "that's the only box on my work report that hasn't been checked off yet. Somehow I didn't want to be a compleatist in that particular section of my life."  
  
"You think it's the wedding that has you so off balance?" Tseng demanded.  
  
Reno paused, then nodded meekly, the broken gesture that only a man wearing a thirty pound shackle weight in the form of a gold band on his fourth finger can make.   
  
"Well this isn't working." Tseng was obviously irritated, a condition which had the occasional side effects on those around him of blind terror and pained screaming. Reno looked up, hope blossoming in his chest like some sort of sticky, tar coated flower.  
  
"I agree," he said with a quick nod of his head. "This wedding thing is, just... bad for business. So you're saying you want me to cut it off?"  
  
"No," came the answer, a snip to the stem of the flower with cyanide scissors, "we just need to find a way to work this energy out of your system." A pale finger pressed down on the intercom on the desk, opening a connection to the newest temp secretary who had reluctantly made his way to the Turk headquarters. "Brian, I'll need two hundred fifty dollars in singles, and directions to the nearest strip club.  
  
***  
  
The Prancing Pony. Patrons of the strip club didn't know which was odder, the fact that a business based on gyrating pink flesh and bouncing tits named itself after a grass munching quadraped or the way it had so clearly gotten that name from a trouble assailed inn in a fantasy book. Then again, all such thoughts instantly left their heads when they made their way past the massive oak doors of the building and promptly forgot their idle questions.  
  
As Rude and Tseng flinched back from the retina searing flourescent lights of the establishment, Reno actually plucked his sunglasses off his head so he could fully absorb the illumination he had been exposed to more so than sunlight. He walked through the club like a puff of smoke through a vent, untouchable, able to get anywhere and everywhere he wanted with the slightest effort as his two companions walked slowly behind.  
  
As he went he exchanged greetings, well wishes, random inquiries into the home lives of everyone who crossed his path. He knew the dancers, the bar tender, the bouncers and the owner, and those were only the one he felt close enough to that he'd call them by their first names. The patrons of the bar, the teeming horde of stumbling, rambling, drunken spectators cleared a path for him to walk through, but if it was out of respect for his well known job or simply difference to a professional in the field neither Tseng nor Rude could tell.  
  
"How do you get any work done?" Tseng finally demanded.  
  
"What do you mean?" Reno asked offhandedly, a king casting a sovreign gaze over his kingdom.   
  
"Between this in your engagement," Tseng continued, "I can't believe I have been sending you a paycheck these last few weeks. If I didn't know any better, I would say all those targets I've been giving you have been dropping dead of heart attacks."  
  
"Oh, what?" came the half offended reply, "I say 'hi' to a few strippers and suddenly I'm some sort of pervert. You both know damn well that the majority of my stripper sex doesn't even come from this place." He looked from Tseng to Rude, as if expecting him to validate his statement. When no such comment came, he rolled his eyes and turned around, followed Tseng's retaliation.  
  
"Well," it came cooly, "if by saying 'hi' you mean asking them questions about their daily lives that I wouldn't be informed enough to ask my closest relatives, then you might have an accurate grasp of the situation."  
  
"I asked how Jewel's kids were," Reno countered, "so what?"  
  
"You asked," Tseng corrected him, "if she'd stopped dying their hair blonde to hide the red from her husband. And then of course their was Kristi, who you asked if she still needed her ceilings painted. Jenna, who you asked if she had fixed that squeak in her bed frame..."  
  
"I'm a curious guy," Reno said with a wicked grin, leading the two other Turks to the front row of chairs. They were suspicously empty, a fact explained by a simple confused glance downward on the dark of Rude, who peered over his sunglasses to make sure he was seeing correctly.   
  
"Did you tell someone we were coming?" he asked Reno slowly.  
  
"Nope."  
  
"...so why exactly is that seat reserved for you?" Rude said, pointing a long finger at the propped up sign that sat on the seat, bearing the name of the red haired Turk. Reno plucked the cardboard construct from its resting point and looked it over before tossing it away, taking his designated seat.  
  
"What?" he asked innocently, "you're saying they don't do that for you?"  
  
Sharing a pained look, Tseng and Rude took their places on either side of him just in time. It seemed that as soon as they were all in position, the lights dimmed, and the crowd began to rumble in approval as the ever over electified DJ got on the microphone to announce the next performer.  
  
"Gentleman, gentleman, and more gentleman," came the play on the original beginning of the speel, which drew a cheer from some of the more inebriated inhabitants of the bar, "the Prancing Pony is happy, ectstatic, absolute orgasssssssmic to bring to you a first timer in these hollowed halls- Crystal!"  
  
The customary roar that followed the entrance of a dancer occured, but then almost doubled in volume as the women actually stepped into view, and Reno drew a surprised look from both his co-workers as he made a weak choking sound and leaned forward for a better look. Almond tanned skin and raven hair twirled under the lights, legs that never seemed to stop twisted around the cool steel pole that lanced into the stage. Newly manicured nails teased quickly across throat, belly, thighs and ribs.  
  
She wore a mask, like all dancers in the club, but hers seemed somehow unlike the others. While the other strippers wore theirs for concealment, simple black or white shrouds that did nothing cut detract from the image, Crystal's seemed tailor made to fit her face and actually accentuate her features, curling gracefully around her eyes and over her nose, sparkling with colored glass that seemed almost too beautiful to be the fakes they undoubtedly were.   
  
The dancer stepped across the stage with the grace of a ballerina, feet barely seeming to touch the floor. On every corner of the stage money was waving, gil flapping in the overhead lights of the club, but Crystal ignored it utterly, her focus seeming to be locked on two things- the steel pole on the stage and the pale faced Turk who was watching her with a mix of fascination and lust.   
  
Smiling seductively, the dancer folded her body in half with a simply bend, playing her hands on the wooden floor of the stage. A moment later her feet were in the air, and a moment after that they were twisted around the pole, a surprising grip from such a small frame. The hands lifted up, and suddenly she was simply dangling from her toes, arching her back as she dangled and drawing almost pained groans from the stunned onlookers.  
  
She reached delicately behind her back with her now free hands and worked diligently as the room seemed to shake with anticipation. For being a building that saw nothing *but* skin, Crystal seemed to possess the uncanny ability to keep the crowd in suspense over what she had hidden- 'had' being used to the fullest extent of the word as strings were undone and the silk top of the girl went fluttering to the ground, causing the crowd to explode with noise.  
  
One onlooker, however, remained silent as he rose to his feet, a curious look on his face. This wasn't exactly considered odd, but when the red haired man began to step up onto the stage the bouncers who just second ago had been exchanging high fives with him began to rush forward in protest. They quickly found themselves faced with two walls by the name of Tseng and Rude, who stood resolutely in their way, arms folded easily over their chests.  
  
  
  
Crystal, for her part, didn't seem a bit surprised, simply placed her hands back on the floor and flipped back to a standing position as Reno approached her. His mouth was twitching, though whether it was in smile or laugh or angry grimace it was impossible to tell. He reached forward as if to brush the dancer's hair from her eyes, but instead seized the mask she wore and pulled it free.  
  
"Hey Turkey," Yuffie whispered, barely audible over the thrumming music of the club. "Funny seeing you here."  
  
"What is this?" he asked, searching her brown eyes with his glowing green ones. Though he himself had been the one to unmask her, Reno now moved to block her face from the view of the crowd, her exposed chest not seeming to bother him in the slightest.   
  
"A present," she said, though it sounded like a question. "You weren't really supposed to recognize me. Did Tseng and Rude tell you?"  
  
"You have a birthmark on the back of your right knee cap," he said simply, "So those two dicks set this up. Remind me to shoot them later," and then pulled her to him, touching his lips to hers. Dissapointed grumblings came flowing in from around them as the crowd realized fully how the show was definetely over, but neither of the figures on the stage seemed to notice as they wrapped their arms around each other- and then suddenly, Yuffie pulled free. Reno opened his mouth in question, only to be sent reeling, an open palm cracking him full force across the cheek.  
  
"I cant *believe* you needed to come to a place like this," was the only explanation he got, a huffy exhalation, and then 'Crystal' was gone in an angry clicking of high heels, leaving Reno standing alone on the stage, suddenly feeling quite exposed. We was still in that exact position a minute or two later when Tseng climbed up beside him, looking incredibly nonplussed by the whole thing.  
  
"So you're marrying *her," he said, just to make sure Reno's hearing hadn't been affected. In response, his employee simply rubbed his cheek, where a dark red mark was rising to the surface.  
  
"Yeah," Reno said, and for the first time his voice didn tseem to hold its usual paranoid edge. "But hey, I could do a lot worse."  
  
"She sets you up, strips for you, smacks you in public," Tseng counted off on his hands. "You're a lucky guy."  
  
Reno caught the mockery in his voice, but ignored it utterly. "Huh," he said, "maybe I am." 


	10. File 10: The End

11:54 AM  
  
Somewhere deep down in the raven-haired head of Yuffie Kisaragi a war raged. Crimson lips were drawn back in vicious snarls, revealing rows of chemically treated teeth that hadn't touched a piece of solid food for three weeks. Nails that were manicured, polished, painted, and then put through the whole process again just for fun rended designer material and gouged thirty dollar bottles of water.  
  
She saw herself stumbling backwards, the result of a well thrown check from an ass so big the Wutain princess reckoned it should have its own zoning ordinances. She went to retaliate with a far less subtle burying of her stiletto heel into the back of the ladies throat, but the opportunity was lost as a pasty stick of a women charged in between them, seizing a sweater that Yuffie wouldn't use to sop up paint in both hands and clutching it to her chest like a newborn baby.  
  
Jostled again, Yuffie was quicker this time, whirling on her heel and lashing out like a cat. Her nails raked across the jiggling cheek of a woman she recognized as the wife of one of the retired Pagoda lords of Wutai, who proceeded to shriek as if she'd just received a red hot poker suppository. Seeing blood, Yuffie pressed her attack, kicking the stunned lordess in the shoulder in a move that's supposed to just stun an opponent but sent the lady to the floor like a plummeting comet.  
  
The ninja fell upon her like a possessed demon, teeth bared in the manic grin of a predator. "You think I'm going to just let you march in here and snatch up anything you want? On clearance sale day?! You'd better wake up you flubber coated bitch..."  
  
"You'd better wake up."  
  
12:01 PM  
  
"Agh!"  
  
In the pile of sheets, pillows, and 'relationship aiding devices'; as the backwater store's sign had so pompously labeled them, Yuffie sat up with her start. Her quickened breath told a little of the terror her eyes showed, and she clutched the nearest solid object- a relatively simply cylinder that became a miracle of God's creation when you thumbed the right series of buttons- so hard that it squeezed out of her hand and launched itself across the room.  
  
"Reno!" she hissed into the darkness of the room. She had no idea what time it was, but their temporary place of dwelling was dark all day long. That fact had been begun when they rented a place with one window and was finished when she had nailed a bath towel over that singular sheet of glass the first time there had been a glare on their TV. She somehow doubted that her cry had actually waken the red-haired Turk, but ranted onward anyway, gathering the covers up to her chest in fear.  
  
"I just had such a nightmare," she practically shrieked, "I had to squeeze my way around cellulose and silicone, and the smell of terrified Junon pool boy was everywhere, and I cared about clothing!" A shiver ran through her body, ending up at about her spine where it quivered for a moment and then settled down. Feeling a little bit better for getting her emotions out in the open, Yuffie glanced to the left.  
  
"AGH!"  
  
*That* woke Reno, though less because of the volume and more because he suddenly had four thin fingers pressing very tightly in his rib cage as if they intended to tickle his heard. They disappeared a moment later as Yuffie vaulted out of the bed and disappeared into the closet, followed instantly by the sound of crashing boxes and rustling material. In the time it took Reno to roll over and groan something incoherent about whether or not they turned off the VCR when they had decided to prove the guy in the porno wrong, she was back- dragging a massive box behind her.  
  
"What's wrong?" he asked, and was instantly assailed by throbbing pain. You know you've been drinking too much when your own voice boomed in your ears. Somehow he doubted her answer would do little to solve his problem.  
  
"Our wedding is in two hours!!" the near hysterical cry came, proving him right and causing him to sit up in a start. "How the hell did we sleep so late?"  
  
"Sleep?" he asked incredulously. "Maybe you managed to sleep. I've been staring at our god damned ceiling for seven hours trying not to burst into tears."  
  
Somewhere in her frantic scurry around the room, gathering wedding supplies that they really shouldn't have used recreationally the night before but had anyway, she found the time to throw a shoe at him for that last comment. He caught it easily and sat up with a laugh, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. When his hand pulled away he saw that Yuffie was staring at him, standing their in her pair of stolen boxers and nothing else. If memory served, he was wearing even less.  
  
Their eyes met.  
  
They froze.  
  
12:19 PM  
  
Searching fruitlessly through the air, Yuffie's hand ends up collapsing down onto the silken white pillow that lays on her head. She pulls it off and tosses it across the room, trying to curb the panting sound she was making to little or no effect. She glanced again at her clock- for a moment saw only her flushed and sticky reflection in its glass surface- and then let out a mild yelp. "Oh God," she groaned, "now we're going to be even later."  
  
"Hey," Reno's voice came in protest, from somewhere under the bed itself, "you aren't allowed to complain. I mean, who's idea was it to throw my pants out the window? Huh? Huh?"  
  
"Yours," she responded icily, rolling to her feet and running into the bathroom. Unless she wanted to get a really condemning look from the priest, she was going to have to brush her teeth thoroughly...  
  
"Oh. Well... what about your bra? How about that?"  
  
"You again."  
  
"Fuck! I mean... skirt. The skirt."  
  
"Any clothes that went out the window was either your doing or your idea," Yuffie said with some finality. This was the last statement exchanged for some time as the majority of their time was taken up retrieving- and often sponging off- their discarded items. Finally they were ready to go, or as ready as they were ever going to get, and ran outside the house and into the dark red convertible that- for tax reasons, his friend had shiftily told him- was Reno's for the week.   
  
Tires smoked across pavement, and even with the occasional temporary pauses Reno took in order to button this, snap that, or remove whatever the hell *that* was from Yuffie's stocking they made record time in reaching the small church they had rented. They spilled out of the car and onto the street, before struggling vertical and racing off in opposite directions towards the rooms they had been told to change in before the wedding, leaving heavy footprints in the dew-wetted grass of the lot.  
  
They left several more as they raced back for one final embrace, which was only two inches of leg away from becoming yet another twenty minute delay, and then went racing off again towards their future.  
  
***  
  
Eyes narrowed in self loathing, Reno slowly tucked his undershirt down into his pants. Six firings, three sanctions, and an eventual gun-point order from Tseng hadn't managed to make him do such a thing, but apparently his own impending damnation was enough. The pants themselves, like his jacket, were a dark navy blue; which had been a fight in itself with Yuffie. Something about not wanting him to buy his tux in the colors that signified his lifetime of murder and destruction, since he'd only be wearing the thing for about two hours in church.  
  
Women, Reno reasoned, had the weirdest priorities.  
  
He heard before he saw the entrance of Rude, a simple clicking of a door opened and shut almost as quietly as the man who entered. Seemingly ignoring his slowly dressing friend, the bald man made his way across the room to the well stocked bar Reno had demanded be present and poured himself a drink, sloshing the liquid around the ice for a few minutes before throwing it back. Now armed with enough alcohol to deal with whatever answer he was given, the sharpshooter called backwards to his friend while pouring another pick-me-up. "So how've you been, Reno?"  
  
There was a heady pause, and Rude rolled his eyes as he turned.  
  
"Reno, I asked how you were... oh."  
  
The 'oh' part of that sentence was caused by what could only be described as the tomato that was now sitting on top of Reno's neck. From the chin up, the Turks skin was doing a hell of a job of mimicking the color of his hair, and paired with a set of bulging eyes and a popping vein in the upper left quadrant of his forehead the whole image was rather unsettling. Sighing, Rude set his glass down and walked over to Reno, putting an arm around his friend. "Buddy" he said slowly, "give me the tie."  
  
Grumbling to himself, Reno unwound the tie from his neck, the correct color returning to his face almost instantly. With the petulant expression of a six year old he held the silky material out to his friend who snatched it away and pocketed it, all the while giving the impending groom a disapproving look. "Some best man you are," Reno snarled, "won't even let a guy choke himself to death with his tie. Isn't one of your duties to guard the door during suicide attempts anyway?"  
  
Ignoring him, Rude returned to his drink. It had been with serious levels of trepidation that Reno had made the choice between his boss and his friend about which one would get the prestigious title, but in the end he just solved the problem the same way he always solved the really tough ones. He locked himself in a room with a strobe light and snorted crushed caffeine pills off a hookers back until he hallucinated one of their names floating in the air above him.  
  
After finishing his second pre-emptory headache treatment for the night, Rude glanced at his watch, and then back up at Reno. He caught his friend's gaze in the mirror, only to find with serious discontent that the condemned man was giving him a look somewhat akin to the look a starving man gives a piece of steak. "You know," Reno said conversationally, but there was a desperate, almost hysteric catch in his voice, "I never noticed this before, but you look just like me. In fact, with a red wig..."  
  
"No." Rude cut him off sharply. "And not just because I'm insulted by the implication I resemble your skinny white ass. It's time to go, Reno."  
  
"I didn't even get a last meal," whined Reno under his breath, but when Rude left the room and made his way towards the final rehearsals Reno followed him anyway, like a stallion with a broken will. Even so, the best man figured it was well within his duty to keep a tight grip on his friend's shoulders as they walked, just in case something unexpected should happen.  
  
On their way, they came across a door that would have been perfectly normal if not for a simple sign, hastily made, tacked to its oak surface. It said, in no uncertain terms, 'brides dressing room'. Rude groaned deep inside as Reno read these words, and a light sparked deep inside the eyes of the man. What he saw- a chance to start a final fight, perhaps to call things off once and for all, maybe- Rude didn't know. All he knew was that when Reno reached for the doorknob, he stopped him on instinct, drawing a scathing look from the redhead.  
  
"Hey," Rude said in defense of his actions, "seeing a bride before the wedding is bad luck."  
  
"You know," Reno said thoughtfully, "so is having one hand."  
  
1:50 PM  
  
"So," came a highly strained voice long since stripped of its patience, "is the discomfort of putting a dress on necessary or just another old tradition?"  
  
"I think," came an equally impatient but mildly amused response, "its to appease all the angry single women sitting in the pews, hating you."  
  
Standing poised on a stool in the center of the room like a pissed of porcelain doll was Yuffie, one leg dangling precariously in the air. Working tirelessly to shove the Wutain princess into her pure white dress was a red faced Elena and two servant girls from the house of Godo. Elena was the maid of honor, a title she'd gotten after making it quite clear that she planned on shooting whatever candidates Yuffie came up with for the job until her own name came to the top of the list.   
  
Interrupting the mild banter of the two was the sound of an opening door, a swinging portal that slid out of the way to reveal the two Turks who had been standing on the other side. While Rude seemed to be recoiling backwards, scowling and clutching at his hand possessively, Reno seemed calm to the point of being deadpan. That mild manner disappeared quick, however, when his gaze fell upon his bride to be perched up on a stool, half dressed in her wedding gown, one leg poised in the air.  
  
2:06 PM  
  
"So," Yuffie said, sounding considerably more winded than before, "is the discomfort of putting the dress on necessary or is it just an old tradition?"  
  
Straining to help pull the white fabric over flushed and sticky skin was Elena, who shot the ninja standing above her a withering look. "In this case," hissed the blonde Turk, forcing back a shudder, "I think it's a penance for tearing it off the first time around so you could screw in a church."  
  
Despite the acid in the voice of the girl helping her dress, Yuffie didn't seem put out at all as she responded. "Look, he was in a *tux*. An actual tux. Granted, I have no idea where the tie was, but the tux was on."  
  
There was a pause as Elena shook her head, and Yuffie glanced down questioningly.  
  
"Did you see the tux?"  
  
"I saw," came the slow response, "considerably more than the tux."  
  
"Oh," the Wutain girl said slowly, wincing. "I guess this is the first time that you've seen Reno's penis. It's sort of a shock at first, I know."  
  
Elena's outburst started with a chuckle, and then erupted into an all out cackle as she threw her head back. She laughed long and hard until, finally, the rapidly disturbed looks of the Wutain servant girls hushed her into silence, but even then she shook with silent glee. After the mirth had finally taken its toll she wiped her mouth and looked up, finding a narrowed set of brown eyes gleaming down at her.  
  
"Um," she improvised, "I mean yes. First time."  
  
Inwardly, she tried to get a mental picture of Reno when he actually had his pants *up*, and failed. Shaking the images away, she glanced up from her work for a moment, and caught something profoundly odd in the eyes of Yuffie Kisaragi.  
  
"What's wrong?" she asked in surprise. "I mean, if I was marrying Reno I'd look upset too, but for some reason you actually seemed to be looking forward to this.  
  
"I know," Yuffie said slowly, and sniffed. "It's just that I wish my mom could be here today. Every little girl dreams of growing up and disappointing their mother with the guy she marries. I miss her."  
  
2:35 PM   
  
Being selected as a bridesmaid or an usher in a wedding is usually dictates extreme honor. It says that not only do the bride and groom like you enough to give you this special title, but that they trust you not to bursts into random spurts of coughing during the phrase that's usually followed by 'or forever hold your peace'. Granted, Reno had spent about twenty minutes on the street with a fistful of twenties looking for someone to do just that, but no one ever accused the red haired Turk of being standard.  
  
Even less usual was the seating pattern of the church. The left pews, designated for those from the bride's side in attendance, were packed to the point of bursting. Relatives, friends, dignitaries, working associates of her father and those who were simply trying to get on the good side of their future Queen. People were even standing, leaning against the left wall despite an open invitation to fill out the other side of the church- I'd rather stand, was the most common response, when someone was asked if they'd like to sit in the groom section.  
  
The groom section which was, to put it nicely, a little thin. With most of the living people Reno knew better than 'hey you' as part of the wedding itself, the right side of the church consisted of less than ten people. The front row held four ladies that might be taken as sisters in the right light- their names were Brianna, Yvetter, Zell, and Tip, though their stage names were entirely different. They all looked reasonably distressed by the impending removal of the red head from the market, but not near as cut up...  
  
...as the three girls who sat behind them. From left to right sat a girl with bright green eyes that somehow went hand in hand with her pink cat collar, and the black hair with red highlights did little to lessen the look; a distinctly Wutain looking girl with ebony hair, sharp eyebrows and a speckle of carpet dimples on her left cheek; and a slim figure with glitter covered nails and hair that looks red, but thanks to the series of dye jobs its taken is probably a new color altogether that human eyes can't distinguish. All three are on the verge of tears, even though most people usually hold that sort of thing off until the wedding actually begins.  
  
In the very back of the church sat a man who looked more out of place than all of the rest of Reno's guests put together. His dark red leather jacket looked almost black in the poor lighting of the church, but their was no mistaking the color of his eyes as they seemed to have a spark of their own. He sat stiffly in the furthest pew, a bible open in his lap, drawing idly on the upper right side of the pages. Every once in a while he would turn a page and draw a bit more, before he finally finished his task and held the holy book up by one cover.  
  
The movement drew the attention of a rather uncomfortable looking Tseng, who glanced up just in time to watch Vincent flip the pages, the different drawings blending together in a mini-movie. With each passing page Tseng's eyes widened a little more, until it looked like he had two saucers pasted onto his face. Standing behind him in her pale pink dress was Elena, who looked a lot less shocked than amazed.  
  
"Did he draw that-" she began.  
  
"Yes," Tseng didn't even let her finish.  
  
"And were those two-"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And that one guy-"  
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
"And that other guy-"  
  
"Oh yes."  
  
"Oh," Elena said shortly, and the two watched in silence as the movie finished itself off. Meeting the shimmering eyes of the artist responsible, Tseng audibly gulped.   
  
Unlike most reverent church procedures, however, the honor and pride of the situation was nowhere to be found. It was replaced instead by a feeling of extreme unease as the opening strains of 'Here Comes the Bride' began to play, and the spot in the church usually occupied by the groom now houses solely a puddle of sweat, and a hanging feeling of emptiness. Glancing around nervously, Tseng leaned over and whispered quietly in Rude's ear.  
  
"Where the hell," he growled slowly, "is Reno?"  
  
"He said he needed to use the bathroom," Rude responded with a shrug.  
  
Tseng fixed him with an almost horrified look. "And you actually believed him? How long have you been dipping into the little collection of plants Reno keeps in his closet, and be specific- it could mean the difference between life or death. Or a very, very twitchy life."  
  
"Hey, I didn't believe him!" protested the bald Turk. "I took the tires from his car so he couldn't make any fast getaways."  
  
Tseng considered. "What about-"  
  
"-and all the other cars on the block," Rude assured him, "I know he can hot-wire basically anything with an engine."  
  
"OK..." Tseng was nodding, "but what about escaping on foot? You've seen him when the bar tab gets called in, he runs like the wind."  
  
"Not with the wild dogs patrolling outside, he won't be."  
  
"How many?"  
  
"Six."  
  
For a long time, Tseng stood still, biting his bottom lip and working things out in his mind. "We," he said solemnly, "are drastically under prepared."  
  
As if spurned onward by the Turk leaders words of woe, the doors leading into the church swing open, punctuated by a swell of the music. As one, the seated assembly rises to their feet and turns to watch the advancement of the future Queen of Wutai as she makes, what most of them have been calling this occasion, her first major mistake before taking power. What they are presented with, however, is the red-faced and scowling visage of the current leader of that nation, Godo Kisaragi, who marched down the carpet reserved for his daughter looking fit to burst.  
  
Interesting side note... when Yuffie had been back in her glory days, planning this overblown event, she had been in momentary agony over who should give her away. Her father had been the obvious choice, but she'd been quite clear in stating that in the few months of employment and several murder attempts Tseng had been more of a father figure to her than her biological parent ever could have. The tie breaker had come, however, when she looked hard at the term 'giving away'... and decided her father had been dying to do that for years.  
  
"Have either of you," he barked at Tseng and Rude, "seen my daughter?"  
  
2:56 PM  
  
Odd fact about the particular church in which Yuffie and Reno had chosen to get married. It had been built back in the dark days of religion, by a priest who had required a bit of privacy for his special tutoring sessions with the altar boys. The fact that those actions had become well known throughout the community but the lack of strong leadership had prevented any punishment from being distributed paired with a growing lack of faith and mistrust in organized religion created a disturbing time that is hard to imagine.  
  
Off that particular digression and back to the beginning, the doors had to be sturdy in order to prevent any unfortunate barging in-upons. The particular redwood door with iron hinges and roughly eight deadbolts in question had survived three stumbling into's, half a dozen frustrated kicks and the concentrated shame of about a hundred pre-pubescent Sunday school students. It was no match, however, from its latest beatings, and with one final breathless heave it splintered like a match stick and collapsed to the thickly carpeted floor.  
  
Tumbling after it was the entangled figures of the two individuals who were supposed to in the center stage even as we speak. Groaning from an unfortunate landing on the iron knob, Reno rolled over to his side and shot a tired grin at his fiancee, who was staring at her hand as if it was an independent creature.  
  
"Woo," she said eloquently, "I feel dizzy."  
  
"Thanks," Reno snickered, "but I'm pretty sure its from the jar of ammonia we broke. Honestly, who uses a janitor's closet to stock cleaning supplies? Don't they know people fool around in those things?"  
  
"A jar of ammonia?" she responded dreamily, "Could you knock it over again?"  
  
Reno blinked, thought over her words, and blinked again. "That was either some very encouraging innuendo or fume induced hallucinatory babble."  
  
"...yes?"  
  
With a chuckle, Reno rolls to his feet, the laugh warping into a groan as every disc in his spine lets out a popping noise with the movement. Rubbing his back with one hand, he reached down with the other and grasped Yuffie by the wrist, hauling her up to her feet and out of the immediate proximity of the spilled chemical. She shook her head to clear her mind, idly returning her dress to its upright and locked position.  
  
"Come on babe," Reno almost whispered, cocking his head to one side as the strains of music finally reached his mind, "It's time we go get hitched."  
  
"You seem eager," Yuffie said, unable to keep the suspicions out of her voice. "I thought you were dreading this."  
  
"Look..." Reno ran a hand back through his hair, staring at nothing at all off in the distance, "I've been thinking. I mean, we've fucked three times in as many hours *before our wedding*. You let me plan out the reception on my own, and your only comment on the almost obscene amount of strippers I've invited is that you wanted to try on one of their outfits. You chose the honeymoon, and we're going on a motorcycle riding tour of the east continents weapon shops. I mean..."  
  
He faltered for a second, chewing on the inside of his cheek, and Yuffie looked at him in genuine surprise. It wasn't often you'd find a Turk at a loss for words, let alone embarrassed, and with this particular Turk it was unheard of.   
  
"You aren't just everything I'm looking for in somebody else," he continued slowly, unsure where exactly the words were coming from, "you're everything that I'm looking for in myself. I love you with everything I have, babe."  
  
He paused, finally met her eyes, finally smiled.   
  
"So sponge off, cause we're getting married." 


	11. Lost File: The Big Party

Bonus File  
  
(Basically, Pip and I did one of those story exchange deals, where you get to ask for a bunch of incredibly weird objects to be placed into a story. The result was this, which just seemed to ring so incredibly with the same tone as the rest of File This I figured Id add this on. Think of it as happening somewhere before the last two chapters)  
  
Click, click, click, click, click...  
  
The crisp sound of suede on linoleum rang out time and time again as the lone figure made its way across the crowded room. There's something about parties that drives people insane, some strange and unknown X-factor that replaces common sense with an extreme feeling of masochism. In normal, every day life, we all know certain things. They are called facts of life. Things like 'don't like the floor', and 'for the love of God stop having a staring contest with the sun'. Those are just two of thousands. A third is that while walking, flat surfaces are best. You do not walk on rocks when you can avoid it. You especially do not walk on knives.  
  
So why, pray tell, do parties cause people to add spikes right to the bottom of their feet?  
  
Click, click, click...  
  
"Ow, ow, ow..." with each step the figure hurt just a little bit more, its toes grinding further down into the pointed tips of the red high heels, its ankles rolling a little bit to either side with every wavering strut. For a brief second it stumbled, but the nearest single man in a business suit was all to happy to step in and stop the fall, somehow accomplishing that feat without ever looking away from the figures amply bulging chest. Before he can glance up past the throat and to the eyes- an act, to be fair, which would have taken him hours- the figure has scurried off with a small wave of thanks, cursing under its breath about the subtle but firm grope that had been placed on its thigh.  
  
This was hell, or at least a very accurate representation. The figure glanced around with tearing eyes, looking for some ally, some bastion of sanity in this sea of pretense and presentation. Instead, it found Yuffie Kisaragi.   
  
Though her mood was currently thousand times better than that of the figure, you would never be able to tell from her expression. The princess heir of Wutai had decided a long time ago that the only expression she would ever wear at a party would simply be varying levels of scowls, and she had managed to stick to that decision since she had been drug to her first celebration ball at six. The fact of the matter was, she actually found this particular party rather pleasant, since coming from the influential position of having thrown it she had all her favorite foods and music around to keep her in good spirits.  
  
Nothing cheered her as much, however, as the limping form heading towards her. Its earrings hung loosely, its makeup looking like it had been applied by several hookers at once, its dress was about two sizes too small and its ankles... well, they were swelling rapidly to the size of grape fruits. The incredible amount of leg that was showing revealed several cuts ranging from nicks to chainsaw attacks, the product of the latest shaving attempt. Over all, a truly withering display.  
  
"Hey Turkey," Yuffie said with a grin so wide it should be in toothpaste commercials, "looking  
  
good."  
  
From behind blood colored lipstick, the red head snarled at her like a wild animal. It was bad enough that he had to suffer the general indignity of going into public dressed this way, but to do it in front of his greatest rival just added poisoned icing to the hell cake. "Shove it, bitch," he snapped, gesturing towards the plastic nails that had been glued onto his real ones, "or I'll scratch your damn eyes out."   
  
***  
  
It had been almost a week ago when a man who looked almost entirely, but not quite, unlike Rufus Shinra had marched into the Turk offices like he owned the place. Only after the intrusion had been answered with the usual hail of bullets that the man had, surprisingly, survived was Tseng willing to talk with him, and even so it had been terse at first. That was before the man produced a briefcase that he laid confidently on the nearest desk, flipping it open with the air of someone turning over a poker card.  
  
One hundred thousand dollars in Gil.  
  
All he wanted, he said, was for the Turks to catch the husband of his girlfriend trying to cheat on her. It seems that she had lately decided that violating the very soul of marriage vows was slightly immoral, and had stopped letting the man touch the only parts of her he had any interest in. Hoping to remedy this by providing proof that her husband was doing the exact same thing as she, granted in different positions and with varying levels of enjoyment, the man had come to the Turks.  
  
After all, he said, they said they would do anything for a price.  
  
Rude had flat out insisted that Elena stay out of it, partially out of the typical possessive fiancee way of acting but mostly because the man and woman involved in this case happened to be her parents, a fact that he knew would both distress her terribly and make it impossible for her to seduce the male- at least in any sort of kind and decent world. Yuffie had reluctantly volunteered, even agreeing to set up the alcohol laden event that would trigger the act of infidelity, but the man with the briefcase had shaken her off.  
  
It seemed that the staying man had a bit of a racist street. Wutains got him about as hot as an accountants love life.   
  
In fact, the man had said, reflecting on his mistress for a moment, he seemed to have a thing for red heads.  
  
Of course, Reno hadn't known any of this at the time. He had stumbled into the room about thirty seconds later, clutching a mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniels and a completely empty of carton of cigarettes, promising in slurs that he would do anything to make up for being late again.  
  
***  
  
"You're pretty," Yuffie commented, giving him a once over with an appraising eye. She went to circle around, only to have Reno spin around like he had been burnt, keeping his other side fully out of the ninjas view. She thought about asking about it- after all, he handed out snapshots of his ass as Christmas gifts- but decided that when you tried to cram something like that into a sequined dress it was a whole different ball park.  
  
"Screw you," Reno muttered in response.  
  
"Oh, please do," the princess continued to gush, "I promise I wont tell any of my friends about it. Ill let everyone think you were untouchable, really. I just wanna get close to some of that hot-"  
  
"-don't make me kill you," was the hissing cut off.  
  
"Hmpf," she tried to sound a lot snippier than she felt, "ice queen. Tease. Your tits are fake anyway."  
  
The assassin glanced irritably down at the two silicon sacs that had been wedged into the almost non-existent space between the front of his dress and his pectorals. "Yeah?" he asked, "Well so are yours!"  
  
"Hey!" for the first time that Reno could remember, Yuffie sounded genuinely offended. "These aren't fake! Im just getting a little help."  
  
"So I've noticed... a little hydro help."  
  
"You wish you could wear a water bra this well, you tramp," Yuffie was back on the offensive, but Reno noticed a resentful glance downward as the Wutain spoke.  
  
"Uh-huh," he mocked, "do you keep goldfish in there, like they do with those shoes?"  
  
"Shut up."  
  
"Do you have to avoid sparks?"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"Slosh, slosh, slosh..."  
  
"SHUT UP!"  
  
"Hey, now!"  
  
Reno and Yuffie both jumped backwards, clutching at their throats in surprise as the voice broke them up from the intense square off they had become involved in. Yuffie waved with false shyness as Reno went to turn away, but both of them froze as they got a better look at the speaker. He was about twenty five, incredibly tanned, and seemed to have been ripped straight from the pages of an Abercrombie catalog, with dark chin stubble and light blonde hair. He was also the exact man, out of hundreds, who they had hoped to find.  
  
"Now I don't want to get involved where I'm not wanted," he said with a carelessness that required incredible concentration, "but two beautiful ladies such as yourselves shouldn't be fighting on such a great night as this. Would either of you like a drink?"  
  
His warm request was greeted with icy silence. After a moment of awkward pause, Yuffie looked over at Reno and kicked him in the leg, away from the man's view. This was working out so perfectly and here he was playing statue, completely ignoring the advances of the unfaithful husband. "I'm sorry," she said sweetly as a way to fill the pause, "but I'm engaged. Christine here is single though."  
  
In wars, soldiers would throw themselves on top of grenades to save their fellow soldiers. Yuffie Kisaragi had just kicked a live bomb into Reno's lap.  
  
"Reeeeally?" the man was practically purring now, as he leaned closer to Reno's ear. Grimacing, the Turk turned his head away, not believing that he was chickening out but at the same time completely unwilling to resist the urge to do so. "Well, we'll just have to do something about that, won't we?"  
  
"I..." Reno choked, somewhere deep in the back of his throat. His body was producing bile, it seemed, at mach speed. "I guess..."  
  
"Oh do you?" the lips that spoke were way too close for comfort now, and now the alcohol tainted organs were pressing up against Reno's neck, tasting perfume mixed with sweat and oddly- to him, anyway- what seemed to be aftershave. It tasted good, however, and for a brief second he thought sparks were literally flying- a bright white flash passed briefly over his vision, but then disappeared, and quickly left his inebriated mind.  
  
Off to the side, Yuffie tucked the micro-camera that was her neckless neatly back in between her breasts, noticing with dismay that there actually was a slight sloshing sound. She considered simply leaving with her film, dumping the difficult duty of extricating himself from this situation squarely on Reno, but something stopped her. Sisterly bonding, she reasoned. "Actually," she piped in, watching Reno's eyes and wondering if she'd actually be able to tell if he tried to black himself out, "she does have a boyfriend that should be coming any sec-"  
  
"Yeah." The voice that cut her off was not a pleasant one, still lustful but quickly replacing the old charm with determination. "I'm sure."  
  
The kiss began to travel upward, leaving wet streaks across the flesh of the red headed Turk. "Uh," Reno managed to squeak, his voice high not out of choice but more blind terror, "I think she's right... I really should... hey, come on!"  
  
Yuffie was stunned. She had seen Reno kill a man because he had almost stepped on his shoes in the park, and he was letting this drunk asshole feel him up? Something about a dress, she sighed, seemed to make people natural victims.   
  
"Let me go!" Reno cried out, finally finding a bit of strength to his voice, but the man simply gripped him tightly by both shoulders.  
  
"Shut up, bitch," he snarled, "you know you want this."  
  
Even as he spoke, however, his expression changed. Maybe it was the thin layer of hair that was already trying to grow back in on Reno's upper lip. Maybe it was the steely biceps he had felt under the soft arms of the dress. Maybe it was the Wutain girl to his right, rearing back like a professional boxer and decking him cleanly across the forehead.  
  
The world may never know. Thoroughly unconscious, the man himself was not talking.  
  
Not remotely interested in the condition of her target- Yuffie hadn't thrown a punch in years that had failed to put someone's lights out- the princess instead checked on her ruffled partner in crime, who was hastily pulling his skewed dress tightly around him. "What a creep," he managed in a scandalized voice.  
  
"Aw, honey," Yuffie said, bizarrely unsure whether or not she was kidding. "Men are pigs."  
  
Hoping to avoid the gathering crowd, she signaled to Reno and walked away, hoping to get the both of them out of public eye. Reno, however, seemed to need something to steel his nerves as he fished around inside his dress. From it he drew a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, which- when logically placed together- produced a glowing ember at the end of a thin white cancer stick. Biting his bottom lip, Reno stooped over and promptly put out the freshly lit nicotine tube on the face of the unconscious man, who let out only a slight groan at the burning.  
  
His job done, Reno tossed away the cigarette and stalked away. Despite continued limping, he was treading quickly with determination. He reached the doors of the party and turned back for just a second to glance at the still form of his assailant.  
  
"Fresh," he spit out, an closed the door behind him. 


End file.
